Sky & Telescope

Telescope Alignment Made Easy p.
64
How to Draw the Moon p. 54
Visit SkyandTelescope.com Download Our Free SkyWeek App
What Put the Bang in the Big Bang p. 22
Explore the Nearby Milky Way p. 32
THE ESSENTI AL GUI DE TO ASTRONOMY
Spot the Other
BLUE PLANETS p. 50
Eclipse from the
EDGE OF SPACE p. 66
See Sirius B: The Nearest
WHITE DWARF p. 30
Cosmic
Gold Rush
Racing to nd exploding stars p. 16
OCTOBER 2013
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COVER IMAGE: STAR FIELD: R. GENDLER;
SUPERNOVA: X-RAY: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.
SEWARD, OPTICAL: NASA/ESA/ASU/J.
HESTER & A. LOLL, INFRARED: NASA/
JPL-CALTECH/UNIV. MINN./R. GEHRZ
On the cover:
This multiwave-
length composite
shows the Crab
Nebula, a famous
supernova remnant.
October 2013 VOL. 126, NO. 4
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SKY
WEEK
OBSERVING OCTOBER
43 In This Section
44 Octobers Sky at a Glance
45 Binocular Highlight
By Gary Seronik
46 Planetary Almanac
47 Northern Hemispheres Sky
By Fred Schaaf

48 Sun, Moon & Planets
By Fred Schaaf
50 Celestial Calendar
By Alan MacRobert
54 Exploring the Moon
By Charles A. Wood
56 Deep-Sky Wonders
By Sue French
S&T TEST REPORT
60 S&T Test Report
By Sean Walker
ALSO IN THI S I SSUE
6 Spectrum
By Robert Naeye
8 Letters
9 75, 50 & 25 Years Ago
By Roger W. Sinnott
10 News Notes
40 Book Review
By Gary Seronik

42 New Product Showcase
64 Telescope Workshop
By Gary Seronik
77 Gallery
86 Focal Point
By Henry G. Stratmann
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FEATURES
16 The Great Supernova Race
In the eort to discover exploding
stars, professionals have taken the
lead, but amateurs have managed to
stay in the game.
By Robert Zimmerman
22 Back to the Big Bang
A faint signal hidden in the universes
earliest light might reveal what hap-
pened in the rst moment after cos-
mic birth. By Bruce Lieberman
30 Octobers Dawn Window
for Sirius B
Sirius in October? If youd like to try
for its legendary white dwarf
companion easier to see now
than in decades heres why to
set your alarm clock.
By Alan Whitman
32 Observing the Milky Way,
Part II: Scutum to
Cassiopeia
The autumn Milky Way is rich in
nearby clusters and nebulae.
By Craig Crossen
66 Chasing Totality
from the Stratosphere
Braving the Australian Outback, an
international amateur team launched a
balloon to catch last Novembers solar
eclipse. By Catalin Beldea & Joe Cali
72 The Man Who
Illustrated the Heavens
H. A. Rey, co-creator of Curious
George, turned his talents skyward
to demystify the stars.
By Ann Mulloy Ashmore

COVER
STORY
NASA / JPL

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Skies, Night Sky, SkyWeek, and ESSCO.
to sound strange, but I had a lot of fun at Julys Green
Bank Star Quest even though the nights were clouded out. This star party is
held at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Vir-
ginia. NRAO generously allows GBSQ attendees to tour inside the security
gate for close-up views of the antennas. NRAO also permits the use of many
of its facilities. GBSQ organizer Roy Jaworski of the Central Appalachian
Astronomy Club lined up impressive speakers, including Jimmy Carroll, one
of the Rocket Boys who inspired the movie October Sky. You can watch my
talk on amateur contributions to exoplanet research at skypub.com/gbsq.
Alas, the weather gods refused to cooperate. During the evenings I hung
out with a bunch of organizers and attendees in the Drake Room, located
in the dormitory where visiting scientists sleep. This is where Frank Drake
unveiled his famous equation in 1961 for
estimating the number of communicat-
ing civilizations in our galaxy.
While bemoaning the clouds, we shot
the breeze about a wide range of topics.
One night featured a spirited discus-
sion about the lack of direction in the
space program, which some felt to be
symptomatic of the U.S. losing its edge.
As one attendee pointed out, NASA cur-
rently relies on Russia to ferry American
astronauts to a space station built with
billions of American taxpayer dollars.
A lot of frustration was expressed
that our nation is being held back by a
bitterly partisan Congress and a political
system beholden to special interests. Several folks expressed the view that
U.S. society has become overly litigious and risk-averse. As an example, one
participant excoriated former NASA administrator Sean OKeefes decision
to cease Hubble servicing missions because of safety concerns.
After discussing private initiatives, there was consensus that we need bold,
visionary leadership to outline a compelling long-term plan for both human
and robotic spaceight. But we all recognized that any major expansion in
the space program will generate opposition, with the familiar refrain, Why
spend all this money up there when we have all these problems down here?
Retired NASA engineer (and amateur astronomer) Robert Dutilly passion-
ately voiced a response: All the money is spent down here. As he explained,
its spent training scientists and engineers, creating jobs, and developing
technologies that eventually lter back into society, for everyones benet. If
the U.S. is indeed losing its edge, this sounds like a way to reverse course.
Money Spent Down Here
This is going
Roy Jaworski and Bob Naeye pose in
front of the Drake equation plaque.
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Editor in Chief
Letters
Write to Letters to the Editor, Sky & Telescope,
90 Sherman St., Cambridge, MA 02140-3264,
or send e-mail to letters@SkyandTelescope.com.
Please limit your comments to 250 words.
Milky Ways Makeup
I very much enjoyed Craig Crossens cover
story about the Milky Way in the July
issue [Part II is on page 32 of this issue].
However, where he accounts for the vari-
ous contributions to the galaxys mass he
mentions stars, interstellar gas, and dust,
but not dark matter. Please explain. I was
under the impression that dark matter
makes up a signicant fraction of the
Milky Ways mass, given that its gravita-
tional contribution aects the speed of
stars rotating around the galaxy.
Pedro Lilienfeld
Lexington, Massachusetts
Editors Note: Good point. There is compelling
evidence that galaxies are enveloped in halos
of dark matter. However, dark matter has
been detected only by its gravitational eects,
and Crossens article was concerned with the
aspects of the Milky Way Galaxy that can
be observed directly and studied in detail
hence the omission of dark matter in his tally.
Is Cosmic Optimism Realistic?
I agree with David Grinspoons June col-
umn (page 14) that it is time to modify the
Drake equation to represent an evolving,
not steady-state, galaxy. As he points out,
the parameter L is a prime candidate for
change. On its website, the SETI Institute
denes L as the length of time that tech-
nologically advanced civilizations release
detectable signals into space. That might
be synonymous with Grinspoons deni-
tion: the civilizations average lifetime. Or
is L instead the average time during which
civilizations emit detectable signals? There
are subtle and important dierences here.
For example, a civilization may persist for
thousands of years, optimizing its popula-
tions distribution and energy production
so much that its high e ciency and low
heat signature make it inadvertently unde-
tectable (except by choice) over most of its
existence.
Thanks for producing such a thought-
provoking article.
Mike Mortenson
Port Townsend, Washington
I must disagree with Grinspoon on the
odds of there being many advanced civi-
lizations in our universe. Even if our civi-
lization is one of the earliest to develop, it
seems to me that there should have been
enough successful civilizations arising
before us that they would be aware of our
existence. If another civilization was aware
of us and could travel between stars, and
if it thought as we do, it generally would
like to (A) conquer us, (B) eat us (or at
least take advantage of our resources), or
(C) befriend us, if for nothing more than
to play interstellar Parcheesi. Yet none of
these has occurred. The only other expla-
nation requires conspiracy-type thinking
of the sort that suggests there is a pan-
universe agreement not to disturb us as
we develop. That seems unreasonable:
would not other civilizations want to keep
a close eye on any people as warlike as we
seem to be?
We have produced radio waves for the
past century. Even if those other beings
have advanced well beyond radio, would
they not still listen to it as a sign of
advanced development?
So, either it is impossible for a civiliza-
tion to reach interstellar travel or com-
munication, or there are very few (if any)
other civilizations out there. Either way,
Grinspoons optimism is unwarranted.
Chris Marrou
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Editors Note: There are indeed strong deter-
rents to interstellar travel. Such travel would
be fastest if a spacecraft could attain a fair
fraction of the speed of light, or circumvent
the distance problem in another way (worm-
holes, for example). However, at 50% light
speed the bombardment of particles from
the interstellar medium would act as lethal
bullets a 1-milligram particle moving at
150,000 kilometers per second would have the
kinetic energy of a 45-kg (100-pound) human
traveling at 22 km/s (14 miles per second).
On the other hand, if civilizations are truly
engaging in interstellar travel, they might
move through the galaxy at slower speeds,
particularly if they send machines rather
than biological creatures. Some scientists
have argued that such eorts could enable
civilizations to colonize the galaxy in a few
million years, a possibility that led physicist
Enrico Fermi to ask, Where is everybody?
When I encounter the Drake equation, I
often think that there has to be an upper
limit on the number of advanced civiliza-
tions predicted, based on one fact: we have
not heard from any of them yet. And as
time goes by without a signal, that upper
limit decreases.
Weve had radio receivers for roughly
100 years and have (to our knowledge)
heard nothing. If we draw a sphere around
ourselves with a radius of 100 light-years
and assume the population density is even
across the Milky Way, the total number
of such spheres that ts within the galaxy
gives us that upper limit. If the popula-
tion density is greater than that, we should
have picked up a signal by now, inten-
tional or not.
S&T: LEAH TISCIONE
October 1938
Palomar Progress
Although it is probable
that the worlds largest
telescope, the 200-inch
reector for Palomar
Observatory in Southern
California, will not be
ready for use for another
year, . . . the steel horseshoe, in which will swing
the 200-inch telescope, is polished. One of the
most painstaking jobs ever attempted in steel, .
. . [this] required polishing to within 5/1000th of
an inch of a perfect circle. One hundred thirty-
one days were devoted to the task and more
than two tons of steel were ground away.
World War II would delay the telescopes
completion for another decade.
October 1963
Weighing a Comet Hith-
erto, astronomers have
known very little about
the masses of comets. In
a few instances a comet
has passed very close to
a planet, without causing
any perceptible change in
the planets orbit. . . .
A more denite answer has been found for
Comet 1956c [Wirtanen] by Elizabeth Roemer, at
the Flagsta, Arizona, station of the U.S. Naval
Observatory. . . . In May, 1957, the nucleus of
Comet Wirtanen was found to be double. . . .
During the next 2 years, observations at Lick,
McDonald, and Flagsta showed a continual
gradual separating of the two nuclei. . . .
She made the basic assumption that this
rate was equal to the velocity of escape from the
comet. From this she calculated that the mass
of Comet Wirtanen was 10
17
grams or somewhat
more. (This is . . . equivalent to a gold sphere
1.3 miles in diameter.)
Roemers estimate is very much in line with
the masses of later comets measured via space-
craft ybys.
October 1988
First Exoplanet [Bruce
Campbell (University of
Victoria)] and associates
. . . have been making
highly precise observa-
tions of the radial veloci-
ties of 18 bright, nearby
stars. By placing a gas cell
between their spectrograph and the Canada-
France-Hawaii Telescope, they superimpose
narrow absorption lines onto the observed stel-
lar spectra. These provide an accurate reference
against which to measure the Doppler shifts of
the stars own lines. . . .
So far only one object, Gamma Cephei,
has been observed long enough to detect a full
orbital period. This 3.2-magnitude K1 subgi-
ant may be circled by a planetlike body only 1.6
times more massive than Jupiter.
Richard Fienberg was reporting from the 1988
meeting of the International Astronomical Union
in Baltimore. The Campbell teams discovery of a
planet outside our own solar system would not be
fully conrmed for another 15 years.
75, 50 & 25 Years Ago Roger W. Sinnott
A back-of-the-envelope calculation gives
an idea of this upper limit. I simplied the
galaxy to an ellipsoid 100,000 100,000
10,000 light-years in size, then subtracted
an inner ellipsoid of 20,000 20,000
5,000 light-years under the (perhaps wild)
assumption that the galaxys center is too
crowded with stars and such to be inhab-
itable. The net volume of the supposed
galactic habitable zone is then 51 trillion
cubic light-years. Dividing that into spheres
of communication 100 light-years in radius
yields roughly 12 million such spheres.
Although fraught with assumptions,
that number represents the number of
civilizations in the galaxy there would
have to be in order for us to have heard
from them by now.
Now, Im certainly not saying there is
no other intelligent life (however you wish
to dene it) in the galaxy. I suppose we
will hear a signal at some point say in
a few hundred years or so. But Im betting
the message wont be, Well get right
back to you.
William Shaheen
Gold Canyon, Arizona
For the Record
The photo of Comet PanSTARRS on the
August issues page 79 was taken by Steve
Riegel, not Rigel as stated.
News Notes
An international team of astronomers
has detected four powerful radio bursts
that appear to come from billions of light-
years away. At that distance, the radio
pulses would each have put out in a few
thousandths of a second the same amount
of energy that the Sun would need 10,000
years to emit.
The bizarre signals came to light as
part of the High Time Resolution Uni-
verse survey, a project using the 64-meter
Parkes radio telescope in Australia that
searches the sky for pulsars and transient
blips. Because the pulsars we detect lie in
our own galaxy, astronomers often look
near the Milky Ways plane when hunt-
ing for these zombie stars. But when Dan
Thornton (University of Manchester, UK,
and CSIRO, Australia) started digging
through normally boring data far from
the galaxys dusty gleam, he stumbled
across the four enigmatic bursts.
The fast radio bursts (or FRBs) have
a distinct look: their lower frequencies
arrive noticeably later than their higher
ones, spreading out the signal into a
unique shape. This spreading happens
because the lower radio frequencies are
more easily diverted by electrons between
us and the source.
The pulse shape encodes how much
stu lies between us and the FRB, and
the spread in the arrival times of these
milliseconds-long signals implies that
they came from far beyond the Milky Way.
Throwing some assumptions into the mix,
Thornton and his colleagues estimate
the four bursts originated at redshifts
from 0.45 to 0.96, 4.6 to 7.6 billion years in
the past. These distances imply energies
between 10
37
and 10
39
joules, or between
100 billion and 10 trillion times the energy
the Sun puts out in a single second.
These four bursts arent the rst to baf-
e astronomers. In 2007 Duncan Lorimer
(now at West Virginia University) and his
colleagues reported a bizarre radio blast
so strong that the processing software
assumed it couldnt be astrophysical and
so deleted part of it from the data. That
RADIO I Mystery Signals from Space
An artists composite of the 64-meter Parkes
radio telescope shows a bright radio burst
(upper left) blazing briey far from the Milky
Ways plane (red swath at right). The Milky Way
image is from a hydrogen-alpha full-sky map.
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Lorimer burst looks like the new four.
So what are FRBs? I dont think we
have any idea what these are, says radio
astronomer Bryan Gaensler (University of
Sydney, Australia). Its a mystery!
Thornton and his colleagues consider
a few ideas in their July 5th Science paper,
but their favorite is that the bursts are
giant ares from a highly magnetized
neutron star called a magnetar. That are
could be created by a massive disruption
of the magnetic eld after a starquake on
the magnetars surface, Thornton says.
Other astronomers have also proposed
their own theories, such as the death
signal from a too-massive neutron star
collapsing to become a black hole when its
spin slows enough to let gravity prevail.
CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
To get astronomy news as it breaks,
visit skypub.com/newsblog.
IN BRIEF
STARS I Taming a Stellar Zoo
EARTH I Faint Young Sun? No Problem
Neutron stars seem to come in a
menagerie of dierent species, but an
international team thinks it has taken
a major step towards unifying this zoo,
Daniele Vigan (University of Alicante,
Spain) and colleagues report in an
upcoming Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society.
The menagerie includes pulsars,
which are the galaxys radio-emitting
lighthouses, and magnetars, which are
unpredictably with X-rays and gamma
rays and boast the strongest magnetic
elds ever detected up to 10,000 tril-
lion times stronger than Earths. But
there are also high-B pulsars (B is the
symbol used for the magnetic eld), fall-
ing somewhere between those two, and
the X-ray Isolated Neutron Stars (XINSs),
a mouthful that designates the radio-
quiet, oldest, and coolest stellar corpses.
Vigans team simulated the aging
and cooling of neutron stars over time,
incorporating an electromagnetic
phenomenon called the Hall eect.
This eect triggers a complex chain of
interactions between the stars magnetic
Astrobiologists have long worried
about how Earth sustained primitive
life 3 billion years ago when the
young Sun was supposedly too faint to
keep our planet from freezing over. But
new 3-D climate simulations oer a
way out of this paradox.
In its infancy, the Sun put out about
70% of the energy it does today. In 1972
Carl Sagan and George Mullen realized
that because of this faint young Sun,
the early Earth should have been com-
pletely frozen over but geologic and
paleontologic evidence shows it wasnt.
The simplest explanation is that our
planets early atmosphere contained lots
of carbon dioxide to trap heat and boost
the surface temperature. But the data
dont back that explanation up.
A key problem has been the com-
puter simulations, which have used
eld and the sea of electrons owing
through the stars crust. Its usually
ignored, but according to Vigans team,
its the most important eect in mag-
netars: it shakes and breaks up their
crusts, dissipating their intense mag-
netic elds in as little as 10,000 years.
By comparing its results with NASA
Chandra and ESA XMM-Newton X-ray
observations of 40 known neutron
stars, the team found that its models
produced evolutionary tracks in which
young neutron stars begin as magne-
tars, then age gracefully through the
other observed categories, cooling to
become high-B pulsars, classic radio
pulsars, and nally XINSs.
Sandro Mereghetti (ISAF-Milano,
Italy), who was not involved in the study,
agrees this picture is a step forward in
taming the neutron star zoo, but says, I
think that what we really need are much
better data on a larger sample of isolated
neutron stars. He adds that the lack of
major planned X-ray space telescopes
might put that work on hold.
MARK ZASTROW
1-D atmospheric proles and couldnt
account for factors such as clouds or
the fact that ice forms rst at the poles,
rather than everywhere at once.
In Julys issue of Astrobiology, Eric
Wolf and Brian Toon (University of Col-
orado, Boulder) describe the results of a
complex 3-D computer model that sug-
gests that about 2.8 billion years ago,
when sunlight was 20% weaker than
it is today, an atmosphere with 1.5%
carbon dioxide (about 40 times what we
have now) and a dash (0.1%) of methane
would have produced a virtually ice-free
Earth with mean temperatures close to
todays. Reducing the CO
2
to just 0.5%
and eliminating the CH
4
yielded a sub-
freezing global mean temperature, but
even then about half of the open ocean
remained ice free.
J. KELLY BEATTY
Plutos moons christened. The International
Astronomical Union has approved names for
the newest of Plutos ve moons, discovered in
Hubble images taken in 201112 (S&T: October
2012, page 14). They are Kerberos (for P4) and
Styx (for P5). In Greek mythology, Kerberos is
the three-headed guard dog that prevents the
dead from escaping the underworld. (The vari-
ant spelling Cerberus is an asteroid.) Styx is the
river (and the goddess thereof) that separates
Earth from the underworld.
J. KELLY BEATTY
Two spacecraft bite the cosmic dust. In
June the French space agency CNES declared
that its exoplanet hunter COROT was o cially
mission accomplie within a few days of the
Caltech-led GALEX being shut o. COROT
stopped sending data last November, and
engineers have been looking for a solution
since then. The failures exact cause remains
unknown, but it looks like the converter that
delivers power to the onboard computer cant
give the electrical kick needed to restart, poten-
tially due to a high-energy particle impact.
(The electronics were also only certied to last
three years, and theyve been in space for six.)
GALEXs fate is funds-driven. It observed the
ultraviolet universe for a decade and was the
rst NASA spacecraft handed over to a private
organization (Caltech), but after extensive fund-
raising the team nally decided to end the
mission on a high note and move on to other
projects. Both satellites will take roughly 50
years to reenter Earths atmosphere.
CAMILLE M. CARLISLE
NASA launches new solar mission. The
Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)
red o on a Pegasus XL rocket on June 27th
for a two-year study of the narrow transi-
tion region between the Suns 10,000-kelvin
chromosphere and its blazing 1-million-kelvin
corona. Equipped with a 20-cm (8-inch) ultra-
violet telescope and better resolution than pre-
vious spectrographs, IRIS will stare at just 1%
of the Suns surface to reveal features as small
as 240 km across. The spacecraft will study the
energetic processes that drive the solar wind
and heat the corona.
SHARI BALOUCHI
SkyandTelescope.com October 2013 11
In a rst-of-its-kind conrmation, an
international team of astronomers has
used the Hubble Space Telescope to
measure the visible light reected from
an exoplanet, and its a deep cobalt blue.
[W]e can actually imagine what this
planet would look like if we were able
to look at it directly, says the teams
leader, Frdric Pont (University of
Exeter, UK).
But lying 10 times closer to its star
than Mercurys distance from the Sun,
the hot Jupiter HD 189733b would not
be a pleasant place to visit. The weather
forecast calls for 1200C (2200F), rain-
ing glass, and up to 15,000-km-per-hour
(9,300-mph) winds.
The transiting exoplanet showed its
true colors by temporarily disappearing.
Using Hubbles STIS spectrograph, the
team measured the star-planet systems
brightness in bluish and greenish light
before, during, and after the planet
slipped behind the star. When the
planet was visible, a tiny fraction of the
detected starlight was reected o the
EXOPLANETS I A Glassy Blue Jupiter
planet (about
1/
10,000 the total bright-
ness). But when the planet hid from
view, the blue light dimmed and the
green did not ergo, the planet itself
must be bright in blue wavelengths.
Although the team didnt observe in
red wavelengths, preliminary measure-
ments of polarized light from the planet
had already indicated a surplus of blue
light and a decit of red. The lack of red
in the spectrum makes sense: if HD
189733b were reddish, its overall bright-
ness would be higher than most of the
hot Jupiters that astronomers have been
able to study this way.
The team suspects that silicate
particles cause the striking color. These
tiny, glassy beads ying through the
churning atmosphere would scatter
blue light toward us. Thats dierent
from Uranus and Neptune, which have
a bluish tint because the methane in
their atmospheres absorbs red light.
Both solar system planets also look far
greener than HD 189733b.
MARK ZASTROW
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IN BRIEF
News Notes
Disk gaps might not signal planets.
Astronomers often suspect that the empty
rings in the dusty gas disks encircling young
stars are caused by one or more planets. But
detailed simulations by Wladimir Lyra (Jet
Propulsion Laboratory) and Marc Kuchner
(NASA/Goddard) in the July 11th Nature
show that these gaps might grow on their
own thanks to a well-known physical phe-
nomenon. The disks dust absorbs starlight,
making it cast o electrons via the photo-
electric eect. These electrons collide with
gas molecules, heating the gas and making
it expand. This expansion then triggers a
change in the gas molecules orbital speed
an increase for the molecules expanding
toward the star, a decrease for those expand-
ing away which in turn pushes the dust
(still moving at its original speed) into a ring.
The process reproduces patterns for a range
of disk types; however, it cant totally explain
gaps in disks with very high or low concen-
trations of gas, such as the controversial TW
Hydrae and Fomalhaut systems.
SHARI BALOUCHI
Crowded clusters host planets. The dis-
covery of two mini-Neptunes around Sun-like
stars in the open cluster NGC 6811 reveals
that small planets can arise in more crowded
neighborhoods than previously thought.
Until now, astronomers had detected only
four planets inside open clusters, compared
to more than 800 planets found around
isolated stars. But in the July 4th Nature,
Sren Meibom (Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics) and colleagues report the
detection of Kepler-66b and Kepler-67b, both
about three times Earths radius and situ-
ated in a billion-year-old open cluster that
was packed with more than 6,000 stars (100
times denser than theorized for the Suns
natal environment) during the era of planet
formation. After considering how many plan-
ets Kepler should have been able to detect
in NGC 6811 if the planet-formation process
works as well in these dense regions as it
does elsewhere, the team concludes that
they observe as many as expected.
SHARI BALOUCHI
This illustration shows the Jupiter-mass exoplanet HD 189733b, which hugs a K-type star 63
light-years away. But dont be fooled by the blue hue: its denitely not habitable.
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News Notes
. . . and Sun Sports Windsock in Interstellar Space
Three years of observations
from NASAs Interstellar Bound-
ary Explorer (IBEX) mission
conrm that charged particles
escaping from the Sun form a
long tail much like a comets,
IBEX principal investigator
David McComas (Southwest
Research Institute) announced
at a July 9th press brieng. The
result also appears in the July
10th Astrophysical Journal.
IBEX launched in 2008 to
map the turbulent boundary
between the realm outside the
solar system and the helio-
sphere, the enormous bubble
lled with charged particles
and magnetic eld lines that
stream out from the Sun in all
directions as the solar wind.
The satellite maps the boundary
indirectly by detecting energetic
neutral atoms, or ENAs, created
when the solar winds protons
steal electrons from slower
hydrogen atoms in the interstel-
lar medium.
Looking over the calibrated
all-sky map of IBEXs cleaned
data, mission scientists found
that lots of ENAs are arriv-
ing directly from the Suns
downwind direction, between
Betelgeuse and Aldebaran along
the Orion-Taurus border. That
suggests that the solar wind
stretches out into interstellar
space as a long tail behind our
star as it moves through the
galaxy. Although details are still
vague, the tail probably resem-
bles the long streamer trailing
behind the star Mira (S&T: April
2012, page 20).
The concentration of ENAs
in this downwind direction
suggests that a faster-moving
stream lines the top and bot-
tom of a middle layer of slower-
moving particles. In hindsight,
this makes complete sense:
researchers have known for
decades that the Sun spits out a
much faster solar wind from its
polar regions than from its mid-
section. Still, the structure was
a surprise.
Its very easy to expect the
right thing once youve seen it,
McComas admits.
Based on its shape, this helio-
tail is squeezed and rotated
slightly by the interstellar mag-
netic eld, rather like a beach
ball distorted and attened by
bungee cords.
J. KELLY BEATTY
Read more and watch a video
explaining the heliotails shape at
skypub.com/heliotail.
more than 20 km (12 miles) making it
the smallest of Neptunes known moons.
S/2004 N 1 appears to travel in a near-
circular orbit very close to Neptunes
equatorial plane. Based on its recorded
positions, it circles the planet every 22.47
SOLAR SYSTEM I New Neptune Moon Discovered . . .
Theres a newfound moon around Nep-
tune, Mark Showalter (SETI Institute) and
his team announced July 15th. This nd,
designated S/2004 N 1, brings the planets
satellite count to 14.
Showalter found the moon by chance
while looking through Hubble Space
Telescope observations taken from 2004
to 2009. He says the little body has sat
unnoticed for years owing to its tiny size
and rapid motion around the planet. The
moon doesnt appear in images from Voy-
ager 2, which ew past Neptune in 1989.
In fact, with an estimated magnitude of
26.5, S/2004 N 1 barely registered in the
individual HST images. If its surface is
dark like those of other nearby satellites,
then the new nd has a diameter of no N
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An artists rendering of how the Suns cometlike heliotail might extend into interstellar space.
N
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S/2004 N 1
Galatea
Despina
Larissa
Thalassa
Rings
Rings
This composite
of Hubble Space
Telescope images
taken in August
2009 shows the
location of a newly
discovered moon,
designated S/2004
N 1, orbiting the
planet Neptune.
hours, meaning it orbits about 105,000
km from Neptunes center. That puts it
between the small inner moons Larissa
and Proteus. (Below, Galatea looks farther
out than Larissa due to projection.)
J. KELLY BEATTY
Sun
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Search for Exploding Stars
Doug Rich of Hampden,
Maine, would go out every clear night and observe about
40 galaxies in an eort to discover his rst supernova.
One by one he would look at galaxies, comparing what he
saw in his telescope with a reference image, hoping each
time that he might see a new spark of light produced by a
star exploding very far away.
But after eight years he had drawn a blank. He nally
realized that if he really wanted to nd a supernova, he
needed to upgrade. He bought a CCD camera, built an
observatory with a computerized 10-inch telescope, and
In the effort to discover exploding stars,
professionals have taken the lead, but
amateurs have managed to stay in the game.
M i ld t l
FOR EIGHT YEARS,
Robert Zimmerman
S
SUPERNOVA
RACE
THE
programmed the system to image about 80 galaxies a
night. As the telescope ran he would sit in his control
room and monitor each image as it was taken, comparing
them by eye to an earlier galaxy image to see if a new star
had appeared.
KABOOM! The Hubble Space Telescope captures SN 2004dj in
galaxy NGC 2403, only 11 million light-years from Earth. Because
of HSTs narrow eld of view, it is used much more frequently to
follow nearby supernovae than to actually discover them. N
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He repeated this routine for three more years without
result. Sometimes hed see an asteroid. Sometimes a cos-
mic ray would leave a false positive on his image. What he
didnt see was a previously unknown supernova.
Then, on a cold January night in 2003, there was some-
thing in one image that was not on the reference image.
The galaxy was about 200 million light-years away and on
its outer periphery a new star had appeared. It was a new
supernova, and Rich was the rst to spot it! It was like
you put me on a plane and ew me to heaven, he recalls.
The Race Takes Shape
Since the invention of the telescope, many supernovae
had been discovered by dedicated amateur astronomers
spending hours at their eyepieces scanning the galaxies
looking for tiny changes. Because professionals used big
telescopes with very small elds of view and were usually
focused on studying specic objects, they were gener-
ally poorly positioned to spot new supernovae when they
appeared in random galaxies in the sky.
Amateurs, however, looked everywhere, and they did
it with binoculars and small telescopes that could look
at many galaxies in one night. And with a large amateur
community, they covered the sky far more thoroughly.
Thus, when a supernova was discovered, it was often
an amateur who struck gold. An exception to this trend
occurred during the 1950s and 60s, when a group led by
Caltech astronomer Fritz Zwicky discovered about 100
supernovae in photographic plates taken with the 48-inch
Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory in California.
But all this has changed in the past 15 years. Begin-
ning in the late 1990s, professionals stepped in, taking
advantage of the advent of automated, computerized, and
remotely controlled telescopes to do their own supernova
searches. Well funded and equipped with sophisticated
software unavailable to amateurs, these professional sur-
veys very quickly began racking up discoveries in num-
bers far greater than any ever produced by amateurs. Not
only was the amateur dominance in the eld of supernova
discovery over, it seemed they were no longer needed.
Professionals could do it all, and far better.
Not so fast. Despite the professionals advantages,
amateurs still have a place in this eld. In fact, if done
properly, amateurs can even beat the pros at this game. As
David Bishop, who maintains the website Latest Superno-
vae notes, There are way too many galaxies out there for
even the most powerful professional survey to cover.
Eyeball to Automated
In the beginning, amateurs simply used their eyes to
hunt for new supernovae. The king of supernova visual
searches is Robert Evans of Hazelbrook, Australia (S&T:
SUPERNOVA HUNTER Above: Maine amateur astronomer
Doug Rich poses with his 16-inch Meade LX200 telescope, which
he has used to discover 16 supernovae since November 2007.
The scope rests on a Paramount ME mount and is equipped with
an SBIG ST-9XE camera. Rich has since formed a team to help
process and analyze his galaxy images. Above right: Doug Rich
caught SN 2005ay (arrowed) in spiral galaxy NGC 3938. A later
image shows the galaxy after the supernova had faded from view.
Bottom right: These comparison images show the distant galaxy
MCG+12-18-22 with and without the very faint SN 2009gh.
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January 2007, page 116). Starting in the early 1980s,
Evans would go out each clear night with his 10-inch
telescope and do a manual sweep of visible galaxies,
looking for new objects. On average he would observe
between 50 and 100 galaxies per hour, depending on how
clustered they were to one another in the sky. Because
he would look at the same galaxies repeatedly, he soon
memorized each ones appearance, and could then tell
instantly if a new object had popped into view.
By 1985 Evans had discovered 11 new supernovae, and
some of his ndings helped lead to the recognition of the
new class of Type Ib supernova. He then upgraded to a
16-inch telescope. Over the ensuing years his discoveries
mounted, until by 2005 his tally had reached 40.
Evanss visual approach is today somewhat unusual.
Since the invention of CCD photography, most amateur
supernova hunters have instead followed Doug Richs
technique: they snap images of their galaxies and then
compare them with reference images. For example,
Wayne Johnson of Benson, Arizona, known among
amateurs as Mr. Galaxy, made his rst two supernova
discoveries visually, like Evans, but he then switched to
CCD imagery for his next four (two of which he found
on one night, May 15/16, 1996). I wasnt doing anything
fancy, he explains. Take the image, blink compare it to a
reference image. You could immediately see if there was
something new in that image.
In more recent years, the search strategy has been
further augmented by computer software that allows
amateurs to remotely and automatically operate their
telescopes. Rather than stay up all night taking galaxy
images, amateurs can program their telescopes to do the
work for them. For example, Michael Schwartz would pro-
gram a telescope at his Tenagra Observatory in Nogales,
Arizona, to snap images of 50 to 100 subject galaxies and
then review the images in the morning by eye to see if
there was anything new. The introduction of automation
is what opens the door, he explains. The result, he adds,
is that Ive discovered so many supernovae that the fun
of discovery has completely worn o.
The most successful by far of the amateur supernova
surveys is led by Tim Puckett of Ellijay, Georgia (S&T:
October 2009, page 32). Like Schwartz, Puckett has
programmed his telescopes to remotely and automatically
image a preset list of galaxies each night. But Puckett
enlisted the help of other amateurs to make his search a
collaborative eort. The group has grown to about two-
dozen members, who process and analyze images taken
by telescopes in Georgia, Arizona, and British Columbia.
By organizing a cadre of amateurs to eliminate false
positives such as cosmic rays, asteroids, and image
artifacts and by then looking for possible supernova
SUPERNOVA SLEUTH By using his vivid memory of galaxy
appearances, Australian amateur Robert Evans has discovered
42 supernovae visually, eight with the pictured 12-inch reector
made by local amateur friends. Right: These images of SN 2000cj,
SN 2000du, and SN 2005af (clockwise from upper left) were taken
after Evans discovered them visually. With the advent of CCD
cameras, the era of visual supernova discoveries is nearly over.
SUPERNOVA TYPES
Supernovae come in many varieties, but most
involve either the explosion of a massive star (Types
Ib, Ic, and II) or the explosion of a white dwarf pushed to
nearly 1.4 solar masses (Type Ia).
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candidates in the remaining images, Pucketts team
e ciently handles the most time-consuming part of
any supernova search eort. As of late June, the Puckett
World Supernova Search had discovered 280 supernovae,
and is looking for more volunteers to operate telescopes
with apertures 14 inches or larger.
The Pros Beef Up
In the past 15 years or so, the hunt for supernovae has
been revolutionized by the advent of a host of professional
survey telescope projects.
Among the rst was the Lick Observatory Supernova
Search (LOSS), which uses the 30-inch Katzman Auto-
matic Imaging Telescope (KAIT). Begun in 1997, the
equipment is entirely robotic, with the software pro-
grammed to check the weather, open the dome, and aim
KAIT at its target list of about 1,000 galaxies per night.
Identifying new supernovae as quickly and as frequently
as possible is what KAIT was designed to do, explains
Brad Cenko (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center).
In its rst three years KAIT found between 20 and 40
supernovae per year. After 2001 those numbers grew, and
for the next decade it found nearly 800. In 2007 a simi-
lar program, the Chilean Automatic Supernova Search
(CHASE), was begun in the Southern Hemisphere.
These surveys can image ve to ten times more galax-
ies per night than any amateur can. Theyre also well
funded and have ample cheap labor in the guise of college
students available to look for potential supernovae in the
many images produced. These surveys have churned
out discoveries at a pace no amateur can match. Then,
in the late 2000s, these survey programs were trumped
by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), which uses the
48-inch Schmidt telescope at Palomar, and the 1.8-meter
Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System
(Pan-STARRS1) instrument in Hawaii. Unlike KAIT, PTF
and Pan-STARRS1 do not look at a target list of specic
galaxies. Instead, they take a more brute-force approach,
using wide-eld telescopes to image gigantic swaths of
the sky each night, which are then analyzed by computer.
The result of these technological wonders has been a
shift in who makes the most discoveries, from amateurs
to professionals. In 1999 amateurs discovered about 78%
of all new supernovae. But in 2012 that percentage had
dropped to 15%. A lot of amateurs are getting discour-
aged, says Rich. The general feeling is that were look-
ing at a time in the future when we might not be making
any supernova discoveries, or very few anyway.
DISCOVERY MACHINE Above: The late Weidong Li (left)
and Alex Filippenko pose with the Katzman Automatic Imag-
ing Telescope (KAIT), a 30-inch reector at Lick Observatory.
Astronomers using KAIT have discovered nearly 1,000 supernovae
since it began operations in 1997. Right: KAIT images about 1,000
galaxies per night, and software automatically identies potential
new objects. Undergraduate students scrutinize these candidates
to determine which ones are likely to be real supernovae.
DISTANT SUPERNOVAE
These images show supernovae
discovered with KAIT: SN 1998dh
(top left), SN 1999gi (left), and
SN 1999by (above).
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For links to websites associated with
professional and amateur supernova searches,
visit skypub.com/supernovarace.
The Race Heats Up
And yet, despite the high-tech competition from profes-
sionals, amateurs are still nding it possible to survive
in the modern era of supernova searches. For example,
though the overall percentage of total supernova discover-
ies by amateurs has plummeted in the past decade, the
actual number of discoveries by amateurs has not really
changed that much. Since 1997 there has been no strong
trend, up or down, in the number of amateur supernova
discoveries. The annual totals have ranged from 114 to 274,
with the average per year during this time period holding
steady at around 167. For example, from 2007 to 2012, years
when professional dominance in this eld was solidied,
amateur discoveries each year were 114, 144, 198, 151, 162,
and 159 respectively, numbers not much dierent from
the 166 supernovae discovered by amateurs in 1999.
What has changed is that the professionals have found
a way to discover many more supernovae in fainter, more
distant galaxies. In 1999 the total number of supernovae
discovered was 216, but in 2012 that number had skyrock-
eted to more than 1,000, the increase entirely because of
the new professional surveys.
Clearly, amateurs still have a place at this table, but to
hold it they have adopted several basic strategies. If you
want to join the search, here are some simple guidelines:
First, know what your equipment can do. For example,
the galaxies you target should not be so far away that any
supernovae that appear will be too faint for your telescope
to see. Pay attention to what is physically realistic, based
on the limitations of your hardware, explains Schwartz.
Second, image as many of the right kinds of galaxies
as you can. The more images you take, the more discov-
NEW SUPERNOVA SLEUTH With its ultra-wide eld and
ability to go extremely deep, the recently commissioned Pan-
STARRS1 telescope on Maui is starting to crank out supernova
discoveries. The example above, SN PS1-12sk, is an extremely
rare and poorly understood Type Ibn supernova.
Days from Peak Brightness
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SN 1991T Light Curve
Wayne Johnson
Steve Knight
Predicted
LIGHT CURVE Amateurs do more than discover supernovae.
These visual observations of SN 1991T revealed the brightening
and fading of a Type Ia supernova with a particularly slow rise.
ROB RATKOWSKI
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eries you make, quips Rich. For example, in 2012 Rich
discovered seven supernovae, but to do that he had to
image more than 10,000 galaxies.
Third, and perhaps most important, assemble a team,
as Tim Puckett did. Todays computerized telescopes can
produce a lot of images, but the software that makes it
easy to spot new objects in those images is unavailable to
amateurs because of cost and di culty of use. Instead,
amateurs still need to look at each image by eye, compar-
ing them one by one with a reference image. This process
is time consuming. By assembling a team of eager volun-
teers to scan the images, amateurs such as Puckett can
still keep up with the pros.
Doug Rich has followed in Pucketts footsteps, and
this eort has quickly paid o. It started with the Eagle
Hill Institute, located in Steuben, Maine, near Acadia
National Park. Eagle Hill had previously focused on Earth
sciences, but staers decided to begin an astronomy
initiative. In December 2012 they asked Rich to give a talk
on his supernova work. I got this brainstorm. Ive been
doing this by myself up until now, and had been fairly
successful, he explains. Why not make it a team thing,
like Tim Puckett does, and allow others to experience the
satisfaction and excitement of making a discovery?
He recruited a handful of volunteers after his talk,
including some amateur astronomers. After several
meetings and the installation of the necessary software
on everyones computers, the system worked as planned.
When he had a clear night A rare thing in Maine,
Rich notes he would take about 150 to 300 galaxy
images and upload them to a website where his volunteers
could download them and compare them to their previ-
ously installed reference images.
On April 7, 2013, the group bagged its rst supernova
discovery. Then, only three weeks later, another one turned
up. It was pretty exciting for these guys, explains Rich.
The fact that we found two in such a short time means I
might start getting more volunteers than I need.
And the possibility of many more amateur discover-
ies continues. Though a survey telescope such as Pan-
STARRS1 can look at most of the visible sky with enough
detail to see almost any supernova in its view, it generally
can scan the entire sky only about once per week.
Thus, the professional survey might spot a supernova,
but it would do so relatively late. An amateur looking each
night thus has a chance of seeing it rst, and by doing so
will provide the scientists information about the earliest
stages of a stellar explosion. There just arent enough
professional observatories across the globe to cover nearby
galaxies as frequently as we would like, explains Cenko.
Or as Doug Rich points out, There are so many galax-
ies out there that its impossible for the professionals to
watch everything.
Contributing editor Robert Zimmerman has just released
a new electronic edition of his book Genesis: The Story of
Apollo 8, available at e-book vendors everywhere or on his
website http://behindtheblack.com.
Professionals
Amateurs
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2004 2008 2012
DISCOVERY RATES Main graph: The red line, based on
publicly reported supernova ndings, shows how the total
supernova discovery rate (amateur and professional combined)
has skyrocketed in recent years due to the advent of new
professional surveys. Inset: As recently as the early 2000s,
amateurs usually discovered more than half the total number of
new supernovae in a given year. Professionals are now nding
the large majority of supernovae, but amateurs continue to
crank out 100 to 200 each year. Some of the professional teams
are nding so many supernovae that they dont publicly report
every discovery, so the number of supernovae detected in the
past decade is actually greater than these graphs indicate.
SUPERNOVA FACTORY The Palomar Transient Factory team
uses the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt telescope at Palomar Obser-
vatory. In June 2013, the group discovered a Type Ib supernova
(provisionally named iPTF13bvn) in spiral galaxy NGC 5806.
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Back to the
Big Bang
High Stakes for Infation
A faint signal hidden in the universes earliest light might
reveal what happened in the rst moment after cosmic birth.
Bruce Lieberman
THE SKY ABOVE CERRO TOCO in Chiles Atacama
Desert slides quickly from a crystalline blue to hues of
purple and charcoal gray as the western horizon dims like
embers in a fading campre. The southern skys brightest
stars begin to emerge overhead, then the Milky Way and
Magellanic Clouds materialize, all three galaxies breathtak-
ingly surreal.
Here, at 17,000 feet above sea level in a desolate, rust-
colored landscape evocative of Mars, is where the hunt is
on for the signature of ination the hypothesized epoch
immediately after the Big Bang when the universe expanded
exponentially for a tiny fraction of a second. Cosmologists
predict that inations signature will appear as vanishingly
faint patterns of polarized light embedded in the cosmic
microwave background (CMB), the radiation released when
the universes primordial soup cooled enough to allow
photons to travel freely across the expanding universe.
Researchers call these polarization patterns B-modes, and
many say that nding them would provide smoking-gun
evidence that ination actually happened.
For this reason, numerous experiments today are racing
to detect these predicted but never-before-seen B-modes.
One of them is called Polarbear, which stands for Polariza-
tion of Background Radiation, and it saw rst light in early
2012 at this high-altitude site below the peak of Cerro Toco.
Its team members hope that their precise observations of
the CMB, which lls every cubic centimeter of the cosmos
with about 400 microwave photons, will reveal the imprint
of inations physics.
Looking for Inations Signature
Ination is a pillar of Big Bang cosmology and explains key
features of the universe we see today. Among them are the
uniform distribution of matter on large scales and the pat-
tern of temperature variations in the CMB. But ination is
still merely a theoretical framework. If it did happen, many
cosmologists expect that it should have generated ripples in
spacetime called gravitational waves, born from quantum
uctuations in gravity itself that were then stretched during
inations superluminal cosmic expansion. These waves
would have left the B-mode imprint on the CMB.
Like all polarization types, B-modes are a particular
orientation of light. A wave of light oscillates perpendicular
UPPER LEFT ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICIA GILLIS-COPPOLA, PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR
to the direction in which it travels. For a light beam that
is unpolarized, there is no preferred angle of vibration
the waves wiggle in random orientations about the axis of
motion. For polarized light, the waves collectively have a
preferred angle of vibration.
Unpolarized sunlight can become polarized when it
reects o a at, nonmetallic surface, such as a lake, so
that the reected waves vibrate parallel to that surface
as they travel toward our eyes. We see the reected light
as glare. Polarized sunglasses are designed to block that
light and thereby reduce the glare.
The CMBs light should be polarized in two dierent
patterns: E-modes and B-modes. Both would have been
created 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the CMB
photons were released and scattered o electrons for the
last time before ying o freely into space. Scattered pho-
tons are generally polarized, but an electron being bom-
barded by photons of the same energy from all sides will
scatter those photons uniformly in all directions, thereby
canceling out the polarization signature.
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electron
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Cold spots Hot spots
(A) Before a wave hits it from behind, a cross-section
of space with an electron in the middle looks normal.
But when the wave hits, the cross-section stretches
and squeezes one way, then another, in an oscillat-
ing pattern (B). Instead of a uniform soup, the elec-
tron sees around it a universe a bit hotter in the
squeezed direction and a bit colder in the stretched
direction (C). Originally, a photons wave wiggles in
all planes perpendicular to the photons motion (D
and E, incoming crosses). When photons scatter o
the electron, they become polarized, wiggling in only
one plane (outgoing lines). The resulting pattern (F)
is a sum of the cold and hot photons polarizations.
But because photons from hotter regions have more
energy, their pattern wins out, meaning the overall
polarization is parallel to the hot regions (G).
How Gravitational Waves Create Polarization
RING AROUND THE ROSIE E- and B-mode polarization pat-
terns look dierent. E-modes have no handedness if you
draw a line down the patterns center and reect the pattern,
nothing changes. B-modes look like spirals and dont reect.
Although gravitational waves can create both types, primordial
B-modes can only be made by gravitational waves.
PLANCK CATCHES E-MODES By stacking maps of more than 11,000 cold and
10,000 hot spots in the CMB, researchers on the science team for the European
Space Agencys Planck satellite revealed the related E-mode polarization patterns
to high precision. The team is now analyzing Plancks polarization data and hopes
to release results for B-modes and the largest angular scales in 2015.
Gravitational waves created polarization patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by stretching and
squeezing space and therefore the plasma soup of primordial photons and electrons as the waves passed.
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But if a gravitational wave comes by, it will squeeze
spacetime in one direction and stretch it in another. That
means the electron will see a universe that is a little bit
hotter in one direction (where the wave squeezed space-
time) and a little bit colder in the other direction (where
the wave stretched spacetime). When photons come at the
electron from these dierent regions, the electron still
scatters them all, but it does so with a preferred direction.
The polarization pattern of the hotter (and therefore more
energetic) photons wins out over that of the cooler ones,
leaving a mark in the CMB.
These marks from the universes many electrons drew
both E- and B-mode patterns. E-modes have already been
detected and studied. But other mechanisms besides grav-
itational waves also produced E-modes, such as photons
scattering o the early universes higher-density regions,
which later grew into galaxies and clusters. The primordial
B-mode pattern, in contrast, only could have originated
from the stretching and squeezing of spacetime by gravi-
tational waves, so cosmologists depend on it for evidence
of ination. It would be a very beautiful conrmation of
another important feature that ination predicts, says
ination architect Alan Guth (MIT).
No Wiggle Room
So, what will each polarization pattern look like? CMB
light waves oscillate at distinct angles in the plane
perpendicular to the waves direction of travel. On CMB
polarization maps, those angles of vibration can be drawn
as line segments angled in a particular direction. As you
go from one point in the sky to another, the segments
orientations create collective patterns. E-modes look like
rings, or rays on a stick-gure Sun (see facing page). But
the B-mode patterns should trace out spirals as you move
from one line segment to another. These curls appear to
turn either clockwise or counterclockwise.
The B-mode pattern is expected to be incredibly hard
to detect. The CMBs temperature varies only a few parts
in 100,000; in comparison, to detect primordial B-modes
detectors must have a sensitivity equivalent to distin-
guishing temperature dierences that vary only a few
hundred parts per billion. E-modes are about 10 times
stronger than that.
Despite these hurdles, cosmologists say that they
should be able to detect this B-mode imprint in the CMB.
The pattern should be most apparent across regions
roughly 2 wide on the sky.
For B-modes to be detectable, they must have been
imprinted by gravitational waves whose amplitude cor-
responds in a specic way to the energy stored in empty
space right after the Big Bang, when three of the four fun-
damental forces the electromagnetic force, the weak
nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force were joined
together. Physicists think this unication of forces existed
until about 10
35
second after the Big Bang, meaning the
forces split right around the time ination ended.
Measuring the intensity of gravitational waves would
essentially be a direct measurement of how much energy
was stored in space itself when ination happened, says
Guth. It would be the rst time that we would have an
observational handle on that question.
Observing the CMB from Cerro Toco
Polarbear is an international, multi-institution experi-
ment at the eastern fringe of Chiles Atacama Desert near
the Bolivian border, where the thin and dry atmosphere
above the barren volcanic landscape makes the site one
of the premier places on Earth for microwave astronomy.
The telescope, which collects microwave light with a 3.5-
meter parabolic dish, is situated in the Chajnantor Scien-
tic Reserve, where numerous high-prole astronomical
projects are under way. Just a short walk from Polarbear
is the 6-meter Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT)
which will also hunt for B-modes and a few miles to
the south is the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter
Array (ALMA), its dozens of antennas gleaming white in
the bright midday Sun.
Polarbear is in its second year of observations. By 2016
PEEK AT THE UNSEEN Three examples of what primordial B-modes might look like. Unlike the E-modes detected by Planck, such
B-modes would not be associated with hot and cold spots in the CMB: theyre created by gravitational waves (see sidebar How Gravi-
tational Waves Create Polarization). Cosmologists expect these patterns to appear in the sky on scales of a few degrees or larger.
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the single telescope will be joined by two others to create
an array of three scopes called the Simons Array that will
measure CMB polarization.
If we can see a signal from this earliest time in the
universe . . . we will have a window to high-energy funda-
mental physics that people dont have on the Earth right
now, says principal investigator Adrian Lee (University of
California, Berkeley), who proposed the project in 2000.
For me, to have a chance at opening a window on that
kind of physics would be a dream come true.
Polarbear faces competition from numerous other
endeavors (see sidebar on facing page). Among them is
SPTpol, a polarization experiment at the 10-meter South
Pole Telescope led by the University of Chicago, and the
Columbia University-led EBEX (the E and B Experi-
ment), a balloon that was launched in December from
McMurdo Station in Antarctica for three weeks of high-
altitude observations. Neighboring ACT was outtted this
spring with a new detector called ACTPol so that it can
search for B-mode signals in the CMB.
These projects take a long time, and someone who
decides to devote ve or 10 years of their lives to this it
means they really think they have a chance to do it, says
cosmologist Scott Dodelson (University of Chicago), who
has made fundamental contributions to understanding
the CMB. There are probably hundreds of people [work-
ing on B-mode search projects], so that is a pretty good
indication that its a big prize.
Back in 2002, when Polarbear scientist Brian Keating
(University of California, San Diego) helped propose the
BICEP experiment at the South Pole to look for B-modes,
scientists thought detections of these signatures in the
CMB were improbable, if not impossible. And they may
be, he says. B-modes from ination may not exist at the
level of detectability, or they may not exist at all. Ination
may not have happened although that seems unlikely.
B-modes will not readily show themselves: they will
only become apparent after much abstract mathematical
analysis of the data, which should reveal the patterns in
the CMB sky, Lee says. The real sky maps will largely
look like noise, but once separated by mathematical analy-
sis, you can see that there are B-modes.
In addition to detecting primordial B-mode signals,
Polarbear, like several other polarization experiments,
will also look for lensed B-modes. These are actually
E-modes converted into B-modes through gravitational
lensing. During its journey across the cosmos, some of
the CMB radiation traveled too close to the universes cos-
mic web of dark matter and galaxy clusters, and the grav-
ity of those objects acted as a lens, bending the photons
paths. That distortion converted a fraction of primordial
E-modes to B-modes.
Studying lensed B-modes, which were detected for the
rst time this past July by the South Pole Telescope team,
could lead to insights about the large-scale structure of
THE WHOLE SHEBANG Top: A side view of the Polarbear
telescope in Chile. The scopes shield hides the primary mirror,
but the receiver box beneath it is visible.
Bottom: Hideki Morii (KEK, Japan) and Zigmund Kermish (now at
Princeton) ne-tune the Polarbear detectors (see page 28). Notice
the oxygen lines to their noses: at 17,000 feet above sea level, the
Atacama site can pose a health hazard to the unprepared.
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the universe and nearly massless, relativistic particles
called neutrinos, Keating says. The lensed polarization
signals could help researchers map the predicted cosmic
neutrino background, as well as determine the contribu-
tion of neutrinos to dark matter. That calculation could
help researchers indirectly determine the mass of the
neutrino, which has not yet been measured. It is some-
what of an embarrassment that we physicists do not know
the mass of the neutrino arguably the fourth most
important particle after the proton, neutron, and elec-
tron! adds Keating.
Understanding the nature of lensed B-modes also
will help researchers distinguish them from primordial
B-modes and subtract them out as unwanted noise.
Fortunately, lensed B-modes are found on the sky at
very small angular scales, on the order of 10 arcminutes,
Lee says one-tenth the size of primordial B-modes.
Polarbears neighbor ACTPol is actually optimized to nd
lensed B-modes, although its expected to also look for the
primordial ones.
Scanning the Chilean Sky
The Polarbear site is designed as much as possible to be
self-contained. It includes a small complex of white ship-
ping containers converted into a lab and control room,
equipment storage, several onsite generators, and a tool-
shed where team members can assemble and repair the
telescopes components. Team members almost always
carry oxygen tanks in small backpacks, and, like scien-
tists at other high-altitude projects around the world, they
wear many dierent hats: astronomer, physicist, engineer,
technician, construction worker, handyman, and tinkerer
frequently in the face of rapidly changing weather
conditions. Here at 17,000 feet, there are no Home Depots;
scientists must react quickly and resourcefully to the
technical glitches that invariably pop up.
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RIGHT ASCENSION
SPTPOL
ACTPOL
ACTPOL
ACTPOL
ACTPOL
POLARBEAR
POLARBEAR
EBEX
EBEX
POLARBEAR
ABS
ABS
QUIJOTE
QUIJOTE
QUIJOTE
SPIDER
QUBIC
BICEP2
RACE TOWARD THE BIG BANG Several projects are currently hunting for the polarization
signature of ination. Shown below are the elds of view for active projects (except for Planck,
which is all-sky). Fields are approximate and distorted by projection at high declinations.
Ground-Based (Chile):
POLARBEAR: Polarization of Background
Radiation
ACTPOL: Atacama Cosmology Telescope
Polarization
ABS: Atacama B-mode Search
Ground-Based (Antarctica):
SPTPOL: South Pole Telescopes polarization-
sensitive camera
BICEP2: Background Imaging of Cosmic
Extragalactic Polarization (and Keck Array)
QUBIC: Q&U Bolometric Interferometer for
Cosmology
Ground-Based (Canary Islands):
QUIJOTE: Q-U-I JOint TEnerife
Balloon Experiments:
EBEX: E and B Experiment
SPIDER: Suborbital Polarimeter for Ination
ESA Satellite Mission:
PLANCK
B-Mode Search Projects Underway
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Learn more about these
projects at skypub.com/
CMBpolarization.
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Right now Polarbear only comprises the Huan Tran
Telescope (HTT), an o-axis Gregorian Mizuguchi-Dra-
gone design fabricated in Italy by VertexRSI, now part of
General Dynamics. (Huan Tran, the telescopes principal
architect, died in an accident in 2010 while on his way to
the Polarbear site during its engineering run in the Inyo
Mountains of California.) The o-axis HTT telescope
has the advantage of having an unobstructed aperture,
because it doesnt need the secondary support structures
required for on-axis telescopes. HTTs antenna has a 2.5-
meter primary mirror precision-machined from a single
piece of aluminum and a lower-precision guard ring that
extends the dish out to 3.5 meters.
Housed in a 2.1-meter receiver that is anchored below
and forward of the primary is a focal plane of 1,274
antenna-coupled, polarization-sensitive bolometers that
measure the angle of vibration of incoming light waves
(see image at right). Put enough measurements together,
and astronomers can determine how the CMB is polar-
ized across that section of sky.
This year Polarbear will move to observing three 15
15 patches of the southern sky, carefully chosen to
minimize the amount of foreground contamination,
primarily by dust from the Milky Way. The telescope cur-
rently observes in a single spectral band centered at 148
GHz, but eventually three scopes will work together as
the planned Simons Array to observe the sky at multiple
frequencies. The second two telescopes will be identical
to the rst but with improved receivers containing more
detectors. An updated receiver will eventually be installed
on HTT, too.
The team is analyzing data from the rst seasons
observing run in 2012 and expects to report results this
fall. To prevent unsuspected biases from creeping in, the
researchers are rst working on a small portion of data
and analyzing it completely except for looking for the
B-modes, Keating says. We do every possible test that you
can do to ensure that the data have high quality, and we
strive to avoid at all costs the spurious eects, the system-
atic eects. Only then will they look for B-modes.
Forward, Cautiously
Sitting in the high-altitude lab during a short break from
work at the observatory site, Polarbear scientist Hans Paar
(University of California, San Diego) says that, like other
teams searching for the prized B-mode signal, his team is
vigilant about not rushing toward a result.
We are hemmed in between the desire to be right and
the desire to be rst, Paar says. The desire to be rst is
not a scientic desire; its a human desire. The desire to
be right is a scientic desire. You dont want to mislead
your community with something thats incorrect.
And what if there are no B-modes to be found?
I would say that if we dont nd B-modes, it in no way
suggests that ination did not happen, Guth says. It
does mean, of course, that we are not getting the opportu-
nity to see a new piece of evidence that would tell us that
ination did happen. If the current generation of experi-
ments fails to detect B-modes, it could simply mean that
the signal is far fainter than cosmologists expect, he says.
But that could indicate that ination occurred at a lower
energy level. So it would have an eect on inationary
theorizing, even if its a negative result, he adds.
Nobel laureate John Mather (NASA/Goddard Space
Flight Center), who worked on the Cosmic Background
Explorer (COBE) satellite that revolutionized CMB science
in the early 1990s, says the detection of B-modes would be
tremendously important but that the signals absence
would also be progress.
For an astronomer, a measurement is a measurement,
so we would be thrilled to have a measurement, Mather
says. We dont have a textbook that says its supposed to
be one way or another. Were in the discovery mode here.
So, I would be happy to know that its there or that its not
there. Then we just go on and try to understand it.
Bruce Lieberman is a freelance science writer with nearly 25
years experience in the news business. He has written about
astronomy and other space-related subjects for Air & Space,
Scientic American, and the Kavli Foundation.
DETECTING POLARIZATION A single antenna can only pick
up light polarized in one direction, so researchers need multiple
antennas to detect all polarization angles. In Polarbears tick-
tack-toe arrangement, each antenna is sensitive to polarization
perpendicular to the antenna slot, allowing the team to detect
both horizontal and vertical polarizations. The bolometers (the
T-shapes in the zoom image) act like receivers that convert
incoming microwaves into signals. To detect polarization angles
between horizontal and vertical, the team subtracts one from the
other. Waves polarized at 45 thus disappear, so other antennas
in the array are rotated 45 from the one shown to compensate.
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The Nearest White Dwarf
Orions belt stars were fading from view on the October
morning 30 years ago when I rst collared the Pup the
famous white dwarf that orbits the Dog Star. In addition
to observing through a bright dawn sky, I had further
dimmed the glare of Sirius A with a Moon lter. Even
so, shards of light danced and ickered all around Sirius
in my 8-inch f/6 Newtonian. But at 348 one faint spark,
only a ten-thousandth as bright as Sirius A, repeatedly
held stationary for a few seconds at a time.
Then as now, Siriuss historic white dwarf companion
star was about the same distance from its primary as
Rigels easier companion is, making it easy to compare
them and conrm that my sighting of the elusive Pup
was at the proper separation. To the unaided eye Sirius
was twinkling only slightly, despite culminating a mere
Dawn Window
Sirius in October? If youd like to try for its legendary white dwarf companion
easier to see now than in decades heres why to set your alarm clock.
Alan Whitman
23 above the south horizon of my British Columbia
backyard, located at 50 north latitude. The seeing was
memorably steady, caused by what meteorologists call an
upper ridgeline passing overhead.
Sirius culminates at dawn in early October, near 9
p.m. in mid-February, and around sunset by late March.
I have succeeded at all of those times. But calm October
dawns, when the seeing is likely to turn particularly
stable, oer you perhaps the best chance of bagging
Sirius B with your scope, especially if you live in a semi-
arid climate as I do. In dry air the temperature usually
plummets after sunset if theres no breeze, and it can be
di cult to cool your mirror as rapidly as the air tempera-
ture falls. But late at night the temperature levels o as it
nears or reaches the dewpoint, and after spending hours
outdoors, your mirror should reach equilibrium with the
air temperature. I enjoy steady seeing during morning
twilight more frequently than at any other time.
In 1844 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel deduced that Sirius
had a massive companion, based on careful measure-
ments of the primarys slightly wavy proper motion across
the sky. But it was not seen until January 1862, when
Alvan G. Clark serendipitously discovered the tiny Pup
while testing an 18.5-inch refractor lens that he and his
father were making (S&T: February 2008, page 30). The
As with planets, stacked-video imaging is the best way to take
pictures of close double stars. At the 2008 Winter Star Party in
the Florida Keys, Damian Peach used a 10-inch scope and a SKY-
nyx 2.0 astro video camera to take 1,800 frames (60 per second)
stacked here. Sirius A and B were 8.4 apart, with the Pup almost
due east from the bright Dog Star.
for Sirius B
Octobers
tiny size of the star, despite its known large mass, set o
a revolution in astrophysics. Sirius B is still the closest
white dwarf to the solar system. (Though its not the easi-
est to view; thats 40 Eridani B).
Of course, once a challenging object has been dis-
covered with a large telescope, it can be detected with a
smaller one. You have a huge advantage over the Clarks
you know that Siriuss companion exists, and where it is.
Sirius A and B are magnitudes 1.5 and +8.5, and this
huge brightness dierence causes all the di culty. The
stars are now 10.0 apart, with B at position angle 81: just
north of due east from A. Their orbital period is 50.2 years,
and their maximum separation of 11.3 is due in 2022.
For weather watchers, a surface high-pressure area
under a strong upper ridge or, better yet, a rare upper
high, will usually cause excellent telescopic seeing due to
light winds at all altitudes and the absence of wind shear.
Try to observe over greenery; avoid heat sources such as
your neighbors roof. High-quality optics, clean and well
collimated, are essential. On four nights since 2008 I
have succeeded with my 16-inch (at 522) and 8-inch (at
348). In those cases I used a 7-mm orthoscopic eyepiece
with opaque photography tape covering half of its tiny eld
stop, along with a 2 Barlow. When Sirius A is hidden just
behind the tapes sharp edge, Sirius B is easier to spot.
On a fth night, February 20, 2008, I put my 8-inch on
its portable Dob mount to observe a bright orange total
eclipse of the Moon low in the east. After totality, noticing
that a southing Sirius was barely twinkling, I tried for the
Pup at only 244 using a lunar lter and no occulting bar.
To my surprise I succeeded, though the separation was
only 8.1 at the time. The seeing was superb that night.
From more southerly latitudes than mine, Siriuss high-
er altitude will improve your chances. Good hunting!
Alan Whitmans rst eyepiece occulting bar was a match-
stick that he placed across the eld stop of a 10.5-mm ortho.
Unfortunately, he often used this eyepiece to project an image
of the Sun onto white paper. When he absentmindedly did so
weeks later, the Sun was crisp for a few seconds, then dissolved
into a blur. Smoke poured from the focuser! The eld lens was
hopelessly coated with tar, and he eventually had to discard a
prized eyepiece.
Tips for Hunting Sirius B
Observe when Sirius is highest in the south, use your highest magni-
cation, hide Siriuss dazzle behind an occulting bar or the sharp edge of
your eyepieces eld stop, and wait patiently for moments of good seeing
but you know that already. The following tips will help further.
Keep watching as dawn brightens. The reduced glare of Sirius A in a twilight
sky may improve the detectability of its 8th-magnitude companion.
Move diraction aside. Your target is almost due east of the bright star.
This puts it almost on a bright diraction spike in a reector with a spider
vane running north-south. In a scope with spider vanes, rotate the tube (or
tilt or turn the whole mount) to move a diraction spike away from Sirius B.
The main source of diraction in any telescope, however, is the edge of the
aperture itself. You cant get rid of this, but you can herd it around. Cut a
square or hexagonal hole in a piece of cardboard, sized so opposite cor-
ners are the width of the aperture. Tape it over the telescopes front. Bright
stars now have four or six diraction spikes. Rotate the mask so celestial
east is between two of them. The photos at left show the improvement.
Practice on Rigel. By a wonderful coincidence, Rigel, nearby in Orions
foot, is a similar but easier bright-and-faint double star. Its separation
is almost the same, 9.5, but the brightness dierence is 10 times less
extreme: magnitudes +0.1 and +7.6 (1 to 1,000 instead of 1 to 10,000). In
Rigels case, the companion (a normal main-sequence star) is south-
southwest of the primary. Itll give you an idea of what to look for.
Dont be haunted. Almost one full orbit ago back in 1968, I was amazed
at how well I could see Siriuss companion in my new homemade 6-inch
reector. Only after several nights did I notice that it changed position with
respect to Sirius when I moved Sirius in the eyepiece! I realized to my horror
that I was seeing not the storied white dwarf but a ghost a faint reection
of Sirius itself between eyepiece lens elements. Check for this by moving
Sirius around. After bragging about my eagle-eyed sighting to relatives and
my high-school science teacher, I had some crow to eat.
Alan MacRobert
1990
1992
Sirius A
1994
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Orbit of Sirius B
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Pictures
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The apparent orbit of Sirius B with respect to Sirius A, as projected onto
the plane of the sky. The true orbit is inclined 43 to the sky. Dates without
decimals are for the beginning of the year.
In 1975, when Sirius
and its companion
were 11.3 apart,
Dennis di Cicco used
a 14-inch Schmidt-
Cassegrain telescope
with and without a
hexagonal mask to
take these photos of
Sirius and Rigel. Only
with the mask is Sir-
ius B really apparent,
just northeast (upper
left) of brilliant A.
No Mask Mask
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The Milky Way is at its most spectacular for observ-
ers at mid-northern latitudes during the evenings of early
autumn. It sweeps from Sagittarius in the southwest
up through Scutum, Aquila, and Vulpecula to Cygnus,
which is almost straight overhead. From Cygnus it
descends toward the northeast horizon through southern
Cepheus and northern Lacerta, Cassiopeia, and Perseus.
The appearance of this stretch of the Milky Way, and the
distribution of its clusters and nebulae, hold clues to our
galaxys spiral structure.
In the rst article of this series we examined Sagittar-
ius and Scorpius, which lie toward the center of our Milky
Way Galaxy. In this direction we look past the stars of the
70-long Scorpius-Centaurus Association, which marks
The autumn Milky Way is rich in nearby clusters and nebulae.
OBSERVING THE MILKY WAY, PART II ,
Galactic Depth Perspective
Craig Crossen
In the autumn Milky Way, we look toward nearby parts of our galaxy.
The splendid North America Nebula, which lies 2,000 light-years
ahead of us in our spiral arm, is shown in this false-color compos-
ite image. Visible light is coded as blue, while infrared is shown
as shades of green, orange, and red. The dust lane separating the
North America Nebula (left) from the Pelican (right) is opaque to
visible light, but infrared shows the freshly born stars within it.
the inner edge of our own Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm, and
across an interarm gap poor in gas, dust, and star clusters.
Beyond that, 5,000 to 7,000 light-years distant, lies the
Sagittarius-Carina Arm, the next spiral arm inward from
our own. It is rich in young open clusters (M21, NGC
6530, NGC 6231), emission nebulae (M8, M17, M20), and
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dust clouds. A window through the Sagittarius-Carina
Arm dust allows us to see the 10,000- to 16,000-light-year-
distant Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (M24), a star-rich
stretch of the Norma Spiral Arm of our galaxys deep
interior. Finally, looking beneath the dust clouds that lie
along the plane of the Milky Way, we see the Great Sagit-
tarius Star Cloud, a section of our galaxys central bulge.
A quick note on terminology: The names of our
galaxys spiral arms have not been standardized. Many
researchers call the Norma Arm the Scutum-Centaurus
or Scutum-Crux Arm. And the Orion-Cygnus Arm is
often called the Orion Arm, Orion Spur, or Local Arm.
The Scutum Star Cloud
As we shift our gaze up along the Milky Way away from
the galactic center (northeastward in terms of celestial
coordinates), we start looking toward our galaxys outer
regions. The last deep-interior feature that we see is the
impressively bright Scutum Star Cloud.
The open clusters Messier 11 and Messier 26 appear
to be in the Scutum Star Cloud, but they are in fact in
the foreground, about 6,000 and 5,000 light-years dis-
tant, respectively. In any case, theyre too old to be true
spiral-arm tracers. Stars and star clusters are born almost
exclusively within spiral arms, but they drift far from
their spiral-arm birthplaces as they age.
In the Scutum Star Cloud, we appear to be looking
along the length of one of the spiral arms as it curves
inward around the galactic center, seeing stars at many
dierent distances superposed on each other. This is
either the Sagittarius-Carina Arm (the next arm inward
from ours), the Norma Arm (the arm inside that), or
possibly a place where both arms intersect. This hasnt
been proved, but it seems plausible because bridges and
branching are common in loose spiral galaxies such as
the Milky Way.
Spiral Structure and Galactic Longitude
When we sweep farther northeastward from the Scu-
tum Star Cloud and farther from the galactic center, we
shift our gaze away from our galaxys inner regions and
increasingly encounter features in our own spiral arm.
To decipher these features and get a sense of galactic
depth perspective on the autumn Milky Way, its helpful
to use the galactic coordinate system. The galactic equator
(galactic latitude 0) is the centerline of the Milky Way,
which makes a full 360 circle around the sky. Around
this equator are four cardinal points of galactic longi-
tude, starting with 0, the direction of the galactic center.
Galactic longitude 90, looking forward along our own
spiral arm, lies in Cygnus just 5 northeast of Deneb.
Longitude 180, the galactic anticenter, is near Beta ()
Tauri on the Taurus-Auriga border. Finally, galactic lon-
gitude 270, looking backward along our spiral arm, is in
the southern constellation of Vela. The part of the Milky
Way from there to longitude 340, in southern Scorpius,
is invisible or barely visible from mid-northern latitudes.
When we speak of looking forward and backward
along our spiral arm, this isnt just a gure of speech.
Most of the stars in our neighborhood are in fact mov-
ing toward Cygnus. No two stars move with exactly the
same speed and direction; for instance our own Sun is
about 9% faster than the average star in its vicinity and is
heading slightly inward and up (away from the galactic
plane). But with few exceptions, the deviations from the
average velocity are quite small.
For observers in the North Temperate Zone, galactic
longitude 90 is nearly straight overhead during early
autumn evenings. Thus when you look straight overhead
toward Deneb and longitude 90, youre looking into the
direction of our neighborhoods orbital motion around the
galactic center. The center itself is just above the south-
west horizon, and the galactic anticenter is just below the
northeast horizon.
The rich open star cluster Messier 11 appears to lie inside the Scutum Star Cloud,
but its actually a foreground object, some 6,000 light-years distant. M11 is about 250
million years old, ample time to wander far from its birthplace within a spiral arm.
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Albireo
Vega
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M11
Great Rift
North
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Nebula
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Cygnus
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Scutum
Star Cloud
The chart on top shows the part of the

Milky Way thats well above the horizon in early
autumn from mid-northern latitudes, stretching from
galactic longitude 20 to 140. The diagram below it depicts
this slice of the Milky Way from above, showing the positions
of selected objects in the galactic plane. The outer edge of the pie
slice is 15,000 light-years from the Sun. Distances to some of the
objects, notably the star clouds, are not known with high precision.
When we look toward
galactic longitudes between
0 and 90, were also looking in
the direction where our galaxys arms
spiral inward toward the center. Thats why the
bright nebulae of the Sagittarius-Carina arm such
as M16 and M17 stretch only to longitude 17 in this direc-
tion, whereas the Eta Carinae Nebula, also in the Sag-
ittarius-Carina arm, lies 72 on the opposite side of the
galactic center, at longitude 288. The Eta Carinae Nebula
doesnt just appear farther from the galactic center than
M16 does it actually is farther, because it lies along the
outcurving portion of the spiral arm, whereas M16 lies
along the incurving portion.
The Great Rift
The Milky Way from Sagittarius to Cygnus isnt merely a
faint band of featureless haze; its divided by a long dark
rift, smudged by several dark patches, and ornamented
by a half-dozen star clouds of dierent sizes and bright-
nesses. To the unaided eye, the most striking feature of
the early autumn Milky Way is the Great Rift, which
divides the Milky Way southwest of Deneb into two more-
or-less parallel streams.
The western (and mostly fainter) branch of the Milky
Way fades out in northern Ophiuchus, obscured by the
large dust cloud that covers much of that constellations
eastern section. But it reappears some 20 farther on in
the region of Eta () Ophiuchi. The Great Rift extends
beyond Sagittarius deep into the far southern Milky Way,
nally ending at Alpha () Centauri.
Wide-angle images of the Milky Way from Cygnus to
Centaurus are remarkably like photos of edge-on spiral
galaxies such as NGC 891 in Andromeda and NGC 4565
in Coma Berenices. Thats because the Great Rift of the
Milky Way and the dark lanes of edge-on external galaxies
are the same sort of thing: clouds of interstellar dust that
obscure the light of the stars of the galaxys interior.
North America
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Sun
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As this photograph of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891
shows, dust tends to collect near a spiral galaxys center plane.
BASE PHOTO: SERGE BRUNIER
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The true nature of the Great Rift can best be appre-
ciated by sweeping with binoculars between the two
streams of the autumn Milky Way. Particularly ne scans
across the Great Rift are from the scintillating star clouds
around Albireo, at the foot of the Northern Cross, toward
the tip of Sagitta, and from the luminous Milky Way glow
near Altair and Gamma () Aquilae toward the star pair of
Epsilon () and Zeta () Aquilae.
The dark lanes that we see on photos of edge-on
spirals such as NGC 891 and 4565 are composites of all
the dust along the planes of such systems. But the Milky
Ways Great Rift is basically a single chain of dust clouds.
It approaches nearest to us in far southern Ophiuchus,
where the dust clouds of the Rho () Ophiuchi star-
formation region north of Antares are less than 700
light-years distant. The Aquila Rift dust clouds west of
Gamma Aquilae are about 1,000 light-years away. And the
dust clouds at the far northeast end of the Great Rift near
Deneb are around 2,200 light-years from us.
But the Rho Ophiuchi complex is between us and the
galactic interior, and Deneb is ahead of us (in terms of
galactic rotation). Thus we have to think of the Great Rift
as a chain of dust clouds extending from ahead of us in
Cygnus to behind us in Centaurus, and lying between us
and the galactic interior. Photos of other spiral galaxies
show that dust lanes often line the interior edges of spiral
arms. The Great Rift marks the interior edge of our spiral
feature, the Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm.
Aquila and the Interarm Gap
Moving up the Milky Way from the Scutum Star Cloud
toward higher galactic longitudes, the next bright section
that we encounter is the Cygnus Star Cloud, a 20-long
oval that lies along the long arm of the Northern Cross,
from Albireo to Gamma () Cygni. The Cygnus Star
Cloud and neighboring parts of Vulpecula contain an
abundance of distant open clusters and stellar associa-
tions. However, the Aquila Milky Way between Scutum
and Vulpecula is very poor in open clusters: Burnhams
Celestial Handbook catalogs ve open clusters in Scutum
and nine in Vulpecula, but only three in the very much
larger Aquila.
Toward Aquila lies the interarm gap between the
incurving edge of the Sagittarius-Carina Arm and the
incurving edge of our own Orion-Cygnus Arm. Thus
toward Aquila we look past a sprinkling of foreground
stars down a long, relatively empty interarm gap toward
very distant star clouds, which are probably the far arc of
our Orion-Cygnus Arm. When we sweep up the autumn
Milky Way from Scutum to Cygnus, we look rst at the
edge of the Sagittarius-Carina Arm, then at the interarm
gap, and nally along our Orion-Cygnus Arm.
The preceding scenario isnt accepted by all astrono-
mers. Some think that the Sagittarius-Carina Arm
extends through Aquila to Vulpecula. But there are some
The Milky Way appears to be split nearly in half by the dust clouds of the
Great Rift. This photograph was taken from the Southern Hemisphere,
where the Milky Ways central regions appear high in the sky.
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IC 1396
Cygnus Star Cloud

problems with this theory. First, the distant nebulae and
clusters in Vulpecula are about as far from the galactic
center as are the Sagittarius-Carina Arm objects in Sagit-
tarius itself. So its unlikely that theyre in the Sagittarius-
Carina Arm, because the arm should be winding inward
in this direction. Second, the brightness of the Aquila
Milky Way decreases from northeast, near Gamma
Aquilae, to the southwest, near Lambda () Aquilae, just
as it would if were seeing the forward arc of our Orion-
Cygnus Arm curving around to the far side of the galactic
bulge. Finally, there are no nearby young open clusters
or emission nebulae in Aquila that could be tracers of the
Sagittarius-Carina Arm.
In fact, Aquila is exceptionally rich in planetary nebu-
lae, which are the remnants of old solar-type stars and
are distributed fairly evenly throughout the galaxys thick
disk (though with a bias toward the interior). Planetary
nebulae are not very easy to see through interstellar dust,
and their abundance in Aquila suggests that there isnt
much dust in this direction except for the sharply
delineated Aquila Rift.
Cygnus: the View Down Our Arm
Because were near the inner edge of our Orion-Cygnus
Spiral Arm, we see no nearby young clusters and only one
nearby stellar association (Scorpius-Centaurus) until we
sweep upward to the Cygnus-Cepheus Milky Way, which
in terms of galactic rotation is ahead of us in our orbit
around the galactic center.
The most prominent young star grouping in this area
is probably the Cygnus OB7 Association, which is cen-
tered roughly 2,000 light-years distant. It includes Deneb
and the North America Nebula (NGC 7000), a splendid
binocular target. The Pelican Nebula (IC 5067) is part
of the same complex, but its separated from the North
America by a band of foreground dust.
The extensive and populous Cepheus OB2 Associa-
tion lies slightly farther away. Its brightest star is the red
supergiant Mu () Cephei (sometimes called Herschels
Garnet Star), and it contains the large emission nebula
IC 1396, which is surprisingly easy to see through 1050
binoculars under dark skies.
The Lacerta OB1 Association, scattered over the
southern half of that constellation, is located just 1,500
light-years from us, and makes a ne 7 binocular eld.
Note that these three nearby associations lie at or
beyond galactic longitude 90, the direction of orbital
motion of our neighborhood of the galaxy, whereas the
more distant Cygnus Star Cloud, where we look down the
forward arc of the Orion Cygnus Arm, is between galactic
BASE PHOTO: SERGE BRUNIER
SkyandTelescope.com October 2013 37 SkyandTelescope.com October 2013 37
longitudes 80 and 60 in other words, a bit toward the
interior of the galaxy. Thats because the spiral arms of
galaxies wind up in the direction of rotation, so the for-
ward arc of our spiral arm is somewhat nearer the galactic
center than we are.
In the northeast (closer) half of the Cygnus Star Cloud,
between Gamma and Eta Cygni, astronomers have identi-
ed several extensive and populous stellar associations.
But they are rather distant (4,000 to 7,000 light-years). In
binoculars this half of the star cloud is rich in stars from
magnitude 7 to 10, but its background glow is pale and
cut through by narrow, snaking, dark lanes. The stars are
the brightest members of the stellar associations, and the
dark lanes are the dust involved with these star groups.
Binoculars resolve fewer stars in the southwest (more
distant) half of the Cygnus Star Cloud, but this region is
an impressively bright glow with a myriad of faint and
momentarily resolved stars embedded inside it. Interstel-
lar dust must be very thin in this direction out to more
than 10,000 light-years.
Other areas in Cygnus with bright Milky Way back-
ground glows and multitudes of faint or partially resolved
stars (as seen in binoculars) lie north and northeast of
the North America Nebula, and in far northeast Cygnus
and neighboring northern Lacerta. In these directions we
have views thousands of light-years long through rela-
tively dust-free windows.
The Great Rift ends at an impressively dark dust
cloud several degrees across between Gamma Cygni
and Deneb, but there are additional dust features north-
east along the Milky Way. The North America Nebula is
shaped by foreground dust clouds to its west, south, and
east. And centered midway between Deneb and Alpha
Cephei is the large naked-eye dust cloud Le Gentil 3.
All spiral galaxies rotate; however, the spiral
arms dont rotate in lockstep with the material
inside them. In fact, spiral arms are much like
tra c jams on a crowded highway. Individual
cars move through tra c jams and out the
other side. Tra c jams do tend to drift down
the road, but much more slowly than the cars
that pass through them.
Gas and dust pile up on the inside edges of
spiral arms, forming dense dust clouds. These
give rise to star-forming regions, which in turn
give rise to clusters and stellar associations.
The hot, bright, bluish stars in these clusters
and associations burn out in short order, but
the fainter stars and more mature clusters
eventually rotate out of the spiral arms and
into the gaps between. Theres actually almost
as much material between the arms as in
them, but these areas appear much dimmer
because they contain few really bright stars.
The pattern is apparent in this HST image
of Messier 51 (whose companion has been
cropped o for clarity). Dark clouds line the
spiral arms inside edges, followed by pink
star-forming regions, followed in turn by
associations of blue-white stars. But there are
numerous exceptions; the process isnt as
orderly in real life as it sounds on paper.
Spiral Arms and Galaxy Rotation
The star-forming region IC 1396 is shown here in false color, with
red, green, and blue representing emissions from sulfur, hydro-
gen, and oxygen, respectively. The bright star near the top is the
red supergiant Mu Cephei. R
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The unaided eye also shows that a branch of the Milky
Way extends from the star clouds of northeastern Cygnus
into central Cepheus, where it dead-ends in the square
formed by Alpha, Beta, Iota (), and Zeta Cephei. In
binoculars this branch of the Milky Way resolves into a
rich eld of stars ranging from magnitude 5 to 9, most of
which are members of the Cepheus OB2 Association.
Cassiopeia: a Window to the Perseus Arm
By nightfall in November, or midnight in September, the
Milky Way constellations that follow Cepheus Cassio-
peia and Perseus are high in the east for mid-northern
observers. The magnicent Double Cluster lies near the
border between these constellations; its technically in
Perseus but visually seems more part of Cassiopeia.
The Perseus Milky Way (excluding the Double Cluster)
appears much thinner and fainter to the unaided eye
than the Milky Way in Cassiopeia. A scan with binoculars
shows why: the Cassiopeia star elds are much richer
than those of Perseus. Toward Perseus the interstellar
dust of our own spiral arm is especially thick, whereas
toward Cassiopeia theres a window between the Orion-
Cygnus Arm dust clouds of Perseus on the east and those
of Cepheus on the west. Through this window we can see
the next spiral feature out from ours.
To get a better perspective on this, look up toward
Deneb, in the direction of galactic longitude 90. Stand
with the galactic center in Sagittarius on your left and the
galactic anticenter (on the Taurus-Auriga border) on your
right. You will see that Cassiopeia lies somewhat right of
longitude 90, about a third of the way from Deneb down
toward the galactic anticenter. Therefore, toward Cassio-
peia were looking ahead (in the direction of galactic rota-
tion) but at an angle through our own Orion-Cygnus Arm
(because were near its inside edge) out toward the rim of
the Milky Way Galaxy. Since theres a window through
nearby dust clouds here, what we see in this direction are
not the stellar associations, clusters, and nebulae of our
own spiral arm, but those of the next spiral feature out:
the Perseus Spiral Arm.
The Cassiopeia Window extends from just east of the
famous variable star Delta () Cephei all the way through
Cassiopeia to the Perseus Double Cluster, which gives the
Perseus Arm its name. Most of Cassiopeias many bright
open clusters are in the Perseus Arm, including M103,
NGC 457, and NGC 663, as is the bright emission nebula
NGC 281. The large but faint emission nebulae IC 1848
and IC 1805 in extreme southeast Cassiopeia are also
tracers of the Perseus Arm. (IC 1848, which measures 2
1, is visible but challenging through 1050 binoculars.)
Cassiopeia oers a window into the nearby Perseus Spiral Arm. It contains
an extraordinary number of star clusters for small telescopes and binoculars;
some of the major ones are labeled here.
7789
281
457
663
M103
Double
Cluster
M52
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The IC 1848/1805 complex is at about the same dis-
tance (7,500 light-years) as the Perseus Double Cluster,
and the line joining the Double Cluster to the nebula
complex is perpendicular to the galactic equator. Thus
their 4 apparent separation implies that the Perseus Arm
is at least 500 light-years thick in the vertical direction.
The distances to the Perseus Arm clusters and nebulae in
Cassiopeia range from roughly 6,000 to 10,000 light-years,
suggesting that the arm is some 4,000 light-years deep
along the galactic plane. But spiral arms are ragged-edged
structures, so this should be understood as an extreme,
not an average, width. Much of the dust in this part of the
Perseus Arm must be inside the arm or even on its far
side, otherwise we would not be able to see so many of its
clusters and associations.
Not all of Cassiopeias open clusters lie in the Perseus
Arm. The major cluster M52 lies about 5,000 light-years
away in the gap between our Orion-Cygnus Arm and
the Perseus Arm. Evolved clusters such as M52 (which
is around 100 million years old), though originally born
in spiral arm dust clouds, can be found scattered across
interarm gaps.
Other examples of evolved open clusters in interarm
gaps are M6 and M7 in the Tail of Scorpius, M23 and M25
in Sagittarius, and M11 and M26 in Scutum.
Sometimes old clusters end up inside spiral arms by
accident. At a distance of 7,500 light-years, the star-rich
cluster NGC 7789 lies inside the Perseus Arm, but its
not a true Perseus Arm cluster because its more than a
billion years old. That means that it has completed several
orbits around the galactic center, and is probably far from
the spiral arm within which it was born.
In the third and nal article of this series, which will
run early next year, well look at the part of the Milky Way
thats visible during the Northern Hemispheres winter,
as well as the spectacular section thats visible only from
the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere.
Craig Crossen, a native of Minnesota, currently lives in
Vienna, Austria. He is researching a book on the ancient
Mesopotamian constellations.
The stars in old open clusters such as NGC 7789 (shown above)
tend to appear fairly uniform, because all the really bright ones
have burned out. This cluster is now dominated by a few aging
red giants. The bright star at right probably lies in the foreground.
The components of the Double Cluster are clearly
distinct, but almost certainly related. Like most young
open clusters, their stars range greatly in brightness,
and many are hot, blue, and extremely luminous.
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Book Review
Gary Seronik
the reference Moon observers
traditionally reach for most often, or covet most strongly,
is Antonn Rkls classic Atlas of the Moon. And yet, as
wonderful as that work is, its lovingly hand-rendered
charts are clearly the product of an earlier era. That it has
remained the go-to lunar atlas for so long is a testament
to its many virtues.
Most people imagine that with all the spacecraft that
have visited our neighboring world since the dawn of
the Space Age, a Moon atlas utilizing images from lunar
orbit is long overdue. And yet it wasnt until NASAs 2009
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission that a suit-
able and comprehensive set of image data existed. Now,
thanks to the team of S&T columnist Charles A. Wood
and amateur astronomer Maurice Collins, those data have
yielded a Rkl for the 21st century.
In many respects, 21st Century Atlas of the Moon uses
the same successful format as its much-lauded prede-
Without doubt,
A New Lunar Atlas
for a New Century
21st Century Atlas of the Moon
Charles A. Wood and Maurice J. S. Collins
(Lunar Publishing, 2012).
111 pages. ISBN 978-0-9886430-0-0. $29.95, spiralbound.
cessor. After a brief introductory section, the reader is
presented with a series of detailed charts, each with a
selection of highlighted features described on the facing
page. This is followed by 8 additional maps depicting the
libration zones, charts of the full Moon, and a section
illustrating the major basin systems. The black-and-white
images used throughout are nicely reproduced and crisply
rendered with a good range of tonal values. The excep-
tions are the set used to depict basins and mare ridges,
which appear pixilated compared with the main charts,
owing to resolution limits in the source data.
Where Rkl used 76 charts to depict the lunar near-
side, Wood and Collins use only 28. This is because the
latter presents the Moon at a scale of roughly 3.5 km/mm,
versus 2.4 km/mm in Rkl. In spite of this, thanks to its
high-resolution LRO images, the 21st Century Atlas charts
are actually more detailed. The reduced scale also allows
more of the Moons surface to be shown on each map,
which means youll have to do less page turning to cover
the same amount of lunar real estate.
As good as the atlas is, I have a couple of minor gripes.
First, though I really like that the charts are sequenced
along lines of lunar longitude (which allows the user to
travel the length of the lunar terminator),
the alternating north-to-south and south-
to-north ow strikes me as an odd, slightly
counterintuitive choice. Second, most let-
tered craters are unlabeled, which means
some fairly substantial features (such as
26-km-diameter Reinhold B, for example)
go unidentied. In addition, the main
charts lack lines of latitude and longitude,
which will make cross-referencing with
other sources a little di cult. On the plus
side, these decisions lead to maps that are
refreshingly uncluttered.
Finally, as with most rst editions, this
one is lightly sprinkled with a number
of minor spelling errors. When it comes
to books about the Moon, its a virtual
certainty that Tranquillitatis will be
misspelled at least once, as it is here on
page 13.
With its spiral binding and spartan
text, this is a volume ideally suited for use
at the business end of a telescope. The
criticisms Ive highlighted dont sig-
nicantly detract from the books appeal
Wood and Collins have produced a
fantastically useful volume that oers a
wonderful alternative to Rkls famed
atlas. As a dedicated lunar observer, I
heartily recommend this book and expect
it will become my go-to eld reference for
telescopic lunar exploration.
Contributing editor Gary Seronik has been
telescoping the Moon for four decades. He
served as editor for both Charles A. Woods
The Modern Moon and Antonn Rkls
Atlas of the Moon.
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New Product Showcase
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DOB RISER Orion Telescopes & Binoculars announces
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New Product Showcase is a reader service featuring innovative equipment and software of interest to amateur astronomers. The
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OBSERVING
October 2013
In This Section
44 Sky at a Glance
44 Northern Hemisphere Sky Chart
45 Binocular Highlight:
Doubling up in Capricornus
46 Planetary Almanac
47 Northern Hemispheres Sky: A Pivotal Month
48 Sun, Moon & Planets:
More Meetings at Dusk & Dawn
50 Celestial Calendar
50 Spotting Uranus and Neptune
51 A Weak Penumbral Lunar Eclipse
52 Action at Jupiter
54 Exploring the Moon: Drawing the Moon
55 Lunar Phases and Librations
56 Deep-Sky Wonders: The Age of Aquarius
Additional Observing Articles:
30 Octobers Dawn Window for Sirius B
32 Observing the Milky Way, Part II:
Scutum to Cassiopeia
PHOTOGRAPH: AKIRA FUJII
In Cygnus, were looking down the length
of our own Milky Way spiral arm.
MI DNI GHT SUNRI SE
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
SUNSET
Planet Visibility SHOWN FOR LATITUDE 40 NORTH AT MID-MONTH
Visible with binoculars in early October
W
S NE
SE E
W
SW
Visible through October 13
OBSERVING
Sky at a Glance
EXACT FOR LATITUDE
40 NORTH.
Galaxy
Double star
Variable star
Open cluster
Diuse nebula
Globular cluster
Planetary nebula
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3
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4
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19
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SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
Moon Phases
28
Using the Map
Go out within an hour of a time
listed to the right. Turn the map
around so the yellow label for the
direction youre facing is at the
bottom. Thats the horizon. Above
it are the constellations in front of
you. The center of the map is
overhead. Ignore the parts
of the map above horizons
youre not facing.
First Qtr October 11 7:02 p.m. EDT
Last Qtr October 26 7:40 p.m. EDT
New October 4 8:35 p.m. EDT
Full October 18 7:38 p.m. EDT
OCTOBER 2013
1 DAWN: The thin waning crescent Moon forms a
triangle with Mars and Regulus; see page 48.
316 DAWN: The zodiacal light is visible in the east 120
to 80 minutes before sunrise from dark locations at
mid-northern latitudes. Look for a tall, broad, right-
leaning pyramid of light with Jupiter near its apex.
4 PREDAWN AND DAWN: The star Delta Gemi-
norum shines just 6 from Jupiter; best viewed
through a telescope or binoculars.
7, 8 DUSK: The waxing crescent Moon shines well to
Venuss right on the 7th and upper left of Venus
on the 8th. Binoculars show Saturn above Mercury
well to Venuss lower right.
9 DUSK: Look for Delta Scorpii just above Venus.
12 EARLY MORNING: A rare triple shadow transit
occurs on Jupiter from 4:32 to 5:37 UT; see page 52.
The event is best viewed from Europe and Africa,
but may be visible in eastern North America.
15 DAWN: Mars passes just 1 upper left of Regulus
fairly high in the east.
16, 17 DUSK: Antares glows less than 2 below Venus low
in the southwest.
18 EVENING: A modest penumbral lunar eclipse
peaks around 7:50 p.m. EDT; see page 51.
25, 26 DAWN: Jupiter shines not far from the Moon.
29 DAWN: The crescent Moon forms a triangle with
Mars and Regulus for the second time this month.
1
Star
magnitudes
0
1
2
3
4
M
6
M
7
M
2
1
M
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No r t h e r n
C r o s s
61
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Oct 11
M
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8
Gary Seronik
Binocular Highlight

Doubling up in Capricornus
When
Late Aug. Midnight*
Early Sept. 11 p.m. *
Late Sept. 10 p.m.*
Early Oct. 9 p.m.*
Late Oct. Nightfall
*Daylight-saving time.
C A P R I C OR NUS
5 b
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Under light-polluted skies, Capricornus is a big,
indistinct constellation. But dont be fooled there
are several nice binocular double stars here that
dont require pristine dark skies. And as a bonus, a
bunch are located in a small piece of the constella-
tions northwest corner.
Lets begin with the easiest double rst: Alpha
() Capricorni. The Alpha duo consists of the bright
middle stars in an attractive, four-in-a-row chain.
Separated by 381, this double is easy to split in any
pair of binoculars. But look carefully do the stars
appear equally bright? At rst glance they might, but
with careful inspection you should be able to detect
the -magnitude dierence between the 3.7-magni-
tude primary and 4.2-magnitude secondary.
South of Alpha, and in the same eld of view, is
our next target: Beta () Capricorni. This is another
wide pair (207 separation), but with a much greater
brightness dierence, which makes Beta slightly
more challenging. The primary star is magnitude 3.2,
while its companion is 6.1. Even so, my 1030 image-
stabilized binos make easy work of this double.
Proceeding 3 south-southeast from Beta
brings us to a tilted right triangle of stars, the
brightest and most northern of which is Rho ()
Capricorni. Rho looks a bit like a dimmer version
of Beta and features 5.0- and 6.7-magnitude compo-
nents separated by 259. Its another easy binocular
split. But if you want a challenge, take a look at
Omicron () Capricorni, the lower left star in the
triangle. Omicron is tough because its component
stars are close (21.6 apart) and the 5.9-magnitude
primary is twice as bright as its 6.7-magnitude com-
panion. I was able to split Omicron with my 1545
image-stabilized binoculars, but not easily . How
about you?
OBSERVING
Planetary Almanac
Sun and Planets, October 2013
October Right Ascension Declination Elongation Magnitude Diameter Illumination Distance
The table above gives each objects right ascension and declination (equinox 2000.0) at 0h Universal Time on selected
dates, and its elongation from the Sun in the morning (Mo) or evening (Ev) sky. Next are the visual magnitude and
equatorial diameter. (Saturns ring extent is 2.27 times its equatorial diameter.) Last are the percentage of a planets disk
illuminated by the Sun and the distance from Earth in astronomical units. (Based on the mean EarthSun distance, 1 a.u. is
149,597,871 kilometers, or 92,955,807 international miles.) For other dates, see SkyandTelescope.com/almanac.
Planet disks at left have south up, to match the view in many telescopes. Blue ticks indicate the pole currently tilted
toward Earth.
The Sun and planets are positioned for mid-October; the colored arrows show the motion of each during the month. The Moon is plotted for evening dates in the Americas when its waxing (right
side illuminated) or full, and for morning dates when its waning (left side). Local time of transit tells when (in Local Mean Time) objects cross the meridian that is, when they appear due south
and at their highest at mid-month. Transits occur an hour later on the 1st, and an hour earlier at months end.
P E GA S US
CAPRI CORNUS
AQUARI US
Fomalhaut
Rigel
Betelgeuse
C A NI S
MA J OR
PI SCES
Sirius
OR I ON
Pleiades
TA UR US
Pollux
Castor
Procyon
Vega
CORVUS
GEMINI
HE R C U L E S
C Y G N U S
Arcturus
V I R GO
B O T E S
L I B R A
L E O
H Y D R A
S C OR P I US
OP HI UC HUS
Antares
SAGITTARIUS
AQUI LA
CETUS
ERI DANUS
ARI ES
Midnight 2 am 4 am 6 am 8 am 10 am 8 pm 6 pm 4 pm 2 pm
LOCAL TIME OF TRANSIT
+30
+40
20
30
40
+20
+10
+30
0
20
30
40
RIGHT ASCENSION
10
h
12
h
14
h
16
h
18
h
20
h
22
h
0
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2
h
4
h
6
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8
h
D
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E QU AT OR
0
+10
+20
10 pm
E C
L I P
T
I C

30
8
11
14
Oct
18 19
24
27
Venus
Pluto
Uranus
Neptune
Jupiter
Saturn
Mercury
Mars
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
10"
Oct 1 11 21 31
16
16 31 1
16
16
31
1
Sun 1 12
h
28.6
m
3 05 26.8 31 57 1.001
31 14
h
20.7
m
14 01 26.8 32 13 0.993
Mercury 1 13
h
55.4
m
14 00 24 Ev 0.1 5.9 73% 1.131
11 14
h
37.4
m
18 32 25 Ev 0.1 6.9 58% 0.973
21 14
h
59.2
m
20 15 21 Ev +0.5 8.5 32% 0.791
31 14
h
35.8
m
16 27 4 Ev +4.8 10.0 1% 0.672
Venus 1 15
h
17.3
m
20 23 45 Ev 4.2 18.4 63% 0.905
11 16
h
03.2
m
23 30 46 Ev 4.3 20.1 59% 0.830
21 16
h
49.6
m
25 43 47 Ev 4.4 22.1 55% 0.754
31 17
h
35.3
m
26 56 47 Ev 4.5 24.6 50% 0.677
Mars 1 9
h
35.5
m
+15 41 47 Mo +1.6 4.4 95% 2.137
16 10
h
10.9
m
+12 45 52 Mo +1.6 4.6 94% 2.039
31 10
h
44.6
m
+9 39 59 Mo +1.5 4.9 93% 1.929
Jupiter 1 7
h
18.6
m
+22 08 80 Mo 2.2 37.6 99% 5.243
31 7
h
27.5
m
+21 54 107 Mo 2.4 41.2 99% 4.786
Saturn 1 14
h
32.5
m
12 42 32 Ev +0.7 15.5 100% 10.693
31 14
h
45.9
m
13 48 6 Ev +0.5 15.3 100% 10.853
Uranus 16 0
h
37.3
m
+3 14 167 Ev +5.7 3.7 100% 19.066
Neptune 16 22
h
19.3
m
11 11 130 Ev +7.9 2.3 100% 29.331
Pluto 16 18
h
38.2
m
20 13 76 Ev +14.1 0.1 100% 32.747
Fred Schaaf
OBSERVING
Northern Hemispheres Sky
Fred Schaaf welcomes your
comments at fschaaf@aol.com.
October brings many major changes in the starry sights
that reign in the evening sky.
Bright galactic center to dim galactic pole. In last
months column, we discussed the Sagittarius Milky Way,
the bright, broad band between us and our galaxys cen-
ter. The all-sky chart on the preceding pages shows that
this region is still visible on October evenings, though its
very low in the southwest.
The constellations that are replacing Sagittarius and
the bright Milky Way in the south and southeast stand
in stark contrast to the departing star-rich realms. To the
east of Sagittarius lie three of the zodiacs four dimmest
constellations: Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces. (Can-
cer, the only fainter zodiacal constellation, wont appear
for several more months.) All three, plus several neigh-
boring constellations, represent mythological gures that
are associated with water. So this, the vastest of all dimly
starred regions of the heavens, is often called the Great
Celestial Sea, or just The Water.
Capricornus, the rst of the three faint zodiacal con-
stellations, now straddles the meridian. Its traditionally
considered to be a Sea-Goat, half goat and half sh, but
its main pattern appears more like a misshapen half-
sandwich assuming that your sky is dark enough to
see all of its stars.
The second constellation is Aquarius, the Water-
Bearer. Its north end features a rather dim but interesting
little Y-shape of stars called the Water Jar or Urn, which
pours south delicate dim streams of stars.
The third is Pisces, which represents a pair of sh on
shing lines. The head of the westward-facing sh is a
dim but very shapely loop of stars called the Circlet. The
easterly sh is even fainter. Strings of dim stars connect
the imagined sh to 3.8-magnitude Alpha () Piscium
also known as Alrescha, which means the Cord.
South and east of Pisces is one more huge constella-
tion thats faint except for its 2nd-magnitude ends. This is
Cetus the Whale. Its head, starring 2.5-magnitude Alpha
Ceti (Menkar), is just rising due east on our map. Its tail,
tipped with 2.0-magnitude Beta () Ceti, also called Deneb
Kaitos or Diphda, is still low in the southeast. Almost due
south of Beta Ceti is an important coordinate point: the
south galactic pole. Its located in a dim area of the constel-
lation Sculptor only 2 from the lovely spiral galaxy NGC
253 and from the globular cluster NGC 288.
Old stars make way for new. South of Aquarius,
and well west of Beta Ceti, is Fomalhaut, the lone 1st-
magnitude star of the traditional autumn constellations.
Its the Alpha star of Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish.
(This is a single sh, not two like Pisces.) Fomalhaut rises
at about the same time as Capella, the zero-magnitude
stellar gem thats still low in the northeast on our map.
Capella wont peak until winter, but it adds it brightness
to the sky just as marginally brighter Arcturus sets in the
west-northwest.
What other replacements in the heavens do we see
brought on by autumn? The Summer Triangle of Vega,
Deneb, and Altair is at last wholly past the zenith. Trailing
behind it in the east is a pattern thats signicantly dim-
mer (2nd magnitude) but still very striking. This is the
largest geometric gure of autumn, the Great Square of
Pegasus.
The two 2nd-magnitude stars of Sagittarius, setting
low in the southwest, are countered by the two 2nd-mag-
nitude stars of Perseus, rising low in the northeast. And
Cassiopeia has nally replaced the Big Dipper as the high-
est bright pattern in the north circumpolar sky.
A Pivotal Month
The celestial glories of summer are replaced by their autumn counterparts.
Aquarius and Capricornus are beautifully rendered in this 1822 star
atlas by Alexander Jamieson.
U
N
I
T
E
D

S
T
A
T
E
S

N
A
V
A
L

O
B
S
E
R
V
A
T
O
R
Y

L
I
B
R
A
R
Y
OBSERVING Mays Sun, Moon & Planets
OBSERVING
Sun, Moon & Planets
More Meetings at Dusk & Dawn
Venus and Mars experience close encounters with bright stars this month.
Brilliant Venus decorates the low south-
west dusk throughout October, passing
close by Antares at mid-month. Saturn and
Mercury start October even lower at dusk
and soon disappear from view. Jupiter rises
in late evening and shines highest in the
south in early dawn. Mars rises around 3
a.m. and has a close, colorful conjunction
with Regulus.
DUS K
Venus brightens from 4.2 to 4.5 in
October and reaches its greatest elonga-
tion from the Sun on November 1st. The
interval between sunset and Venus-set
grows signicantly during October
from about 1 to 2 hours for viewers
around 40 north latitude. But the planet
is so far south on the celestial sphere
that it remains fairly low, just 10 above
the southwest horizon 45 minutes after
sunset. So the best time to view Venus
through a telescope is around sunset or
even earlier. Then you can watch its angu-
lar diameter grow from 18 to 25, and its
phase wane from 63% to 50% illuminated,
during the course of October.
On October 9th, binoculars and wide-
eld telescopes show the 2nd-magnitude
star Delta () Scorpii, also called Dschubba,
a mere above Venus. On October 16th,
1st-magnitude Antares is 1 to Venuss
lower left. Venus glides through Libra,
Scorpius, and Ophiuchus during October,
entering Sagittarius on November 1st.
Saturn should be visible without opti-
cal aid in early October, glowing far to
Venuss lower right. Saturn appears lower
each evening, so observers at mid-north-
ern latitudes will probably need binoculars
to see it after mid-month. Mercury is
twice as bright as Saturn but quite a bit
lower, so it will probably require binocu-
lars throughout this apparition.
In bright twilight on October 7th, point
your binoculars well to the lower right of
the slender crescent Moon for Saturn glow-
ing at magnitude +0.6 with Mercury 5
below it, shining feebly through the thick
air and sunset afterglow at magnitude 0.1.
Large backyard telescopes still show
Pluto in the south or southwest immedi-
ately after nightfall. Use the nder charts
on page 52 of the June issue.
E V E NI NG A ND NI GHT
Uranus comes to opposition in Pisces on
October 3rd, so this month its highest
around midnight (daylight-saving time).
Thats the best time to locate the 5.7-mag-
nitude world and study its tiny, 3.7-wide
blue or blue-green disk in your telescope.
Neptune, in Aquarius, is just one-
eighth as bright (magnitude 7.9), less than
two-thirds as wide (2.3), and highest in
mid- to late evening. Use the charts on
page 50 to locate the two ice giants.
DAWN
Jupiter rises around midnight (daylight-
saving time) on October 1st, and two
Dawn, Sept 30Oct 3
1 hour before sunrise
Regulus
Mars
Moon
Sept 30
Moon
Oct 1
Moon
Oct 2
Moon
Oct 3
Looking East
S i c k l e
o f
L E O
Dawn, Oct 14
1 hour before sunrise
Regulus
Just 1
apart!
Denebola
Mars
Looking East, high in the sky
g
S i c k l e
o f
L E O
Oct 24 26
Castor
Procyon
Pollux
Jupiter
Moon
Oct 24
Moon
Oct 25
Moon
Oct 26
G E M I N I
Around 6 am
Looking South, high in the sky

Fred Schaaf To see what the sky looks like at any given time and date, go to SkyandTelescope.com/skychart.
Jupiter
Neptune
Uranus
Pluto
Saturn
March
equinox
Sept.
equinox
December
solstice
June solstice
Mars
Earth
Sun
Mercury
Venus
ORBI TS OF THE PLANETS
The curved arrows show each planets movement during
October. The outer planets dont change position enough
in a month to notice at this scale.
hours earlier by the end of the month. It
brightens from magnitude 2.2 to 2.4
during October, and its angular diameter
increases from about 38 to 41. Jupiter
reaches western quadrature (90 west of
the Sun) on October 12th. Thats when we
see it at its most side-lit, so this month is
especially favorable for viewing eclipses
and shadow transits of its Galilean satel-
lites (see page 52). Jupiter is near its high-
est, and therefore its best in a telescope,
early in morning twilight.
Jupiter is moving slowly east relative to
background stars. It has a wonderful con-
junction with Delta Geminorum (Wasat)
on October 4th, passing little more than
6 north of the star for the Americas. The
star is magnitude 3.5, more than a mag-
nitude brighter than Ganymede, Jupiters
brightest moon. So it will be interesting to
test whether you can see Wasat with your
naked eyes so near Jupiters glare. (Gany-
mede that morning is 3 to 4 from Jupiter
for the Americas.)
Mars rises 4 to 5 hours before the Sun
this month. Its in Leo all month, passing
less than 1 from Regulus on the Ameri-
can morning of October 15th. Compare
the blue-white of 1.4-magnitude Regulus
to the orange-yellow of 1.6-magnitude
Mars, and see if the colors are enhanced
by contrast when the objects appear espe-
cially close to each other. This happens
routinely with double stars.
But a third object races in to glide very
close to Mars and Regulus Comet ISON.
Comet C/2012 S1 ISON is now fairly
high in the predawn sky, possibly bright-
ening from 10th to 7th magnitude during
October. It passes just 0.07 a.u. directly
above the orbit of Mars when Mars is there
on October 1st and then takes exactly
one month to y in to a point directly
above Earths orbit.
Dusk, Oct 79
1 hour after sunset
Antares
Venus
Moon
Oct 7
Moon
Oct 8
Moon
Oct 9
Looking Southwest
Dusk, Oct 16
1 hour after sunset
Antares
Venus
Looking Southwest
1
1
/2
apart
The comet passes 2 north of Regulus
on the 16th. Mars and Comet ISON pro-
ceed in tandem through the stars about
1 apart from October 16th to 19th. ISON
reaches a greatest elongation of 54 from
the Sun on October 23rd. Next month
comes its dramatic plunge toward the Sun
past another 1st-magnitude star and two
planets. It may reach naked-eye visibility
in mid-November and might become
spectacular in early to mid-December. See
skypub.com/ison for the latest updates.
MOON E V E NT S
The thin waxing crescent Moon forms a
roughly equilateral triangle with Venus
and Antares on October 8th.
The full Moon experiences a penum-
bral eclipse on October 18th. The eclipse
is deepest around 7:50 p.m. EDT (23:50
UT), when the Moon is high in Europe
and Africa and well above the horizon in
northeastern North America and much of
South America. Look for a subtle shading
on the Moons southern third; see page 51
for details.
The last-quarter Moon shines lower
right of Jupiter high at dawn on October
25th. The waning crescent makes an
approximately equilateral triangle with
Mars and Regulus on the morning of
October 29th.
OBSERVING
Celestial Calendar
The dim southern sky of fall is lled
with water-themed constellations, so this
whole enormous region is sometimes
called the Great Celestial Sea. In light-
polluted skies its almost as blank as a
real ocean, but the slightest low-power
optical aid enables you to work through its
ancient and legendary constellations. Here
Spotting Uranus and Neptune
In the Great Celestial Sea oat the ice-giant twins of autumn evenings.
also oat the solar systems two ice giant
planets, Uranus and Neptune.
At magnitude 5.7 in September and
October, Uranus is actually a naked-eye
planet (barely) from a dark wilderness
site. Its easy with binoculars from almost
anywhere. Neptune is a tougher catch at
magnitude 7.8 or 7.9.
A challenge is detecting their colors
and being sure youre not imagining
them. Uranus to me shows a subtle, very
pale aquamarine blue-green tint in 1050
binoculars. This becomes plainer in a
telescope, especially if there are contrasting
stars in the same eld. Neptune is a color-
less point to me in binoculars but shows a
C E T US
P I S C E S
Path of Uranus
0
Path of
Neptune
A QUA R I US
Jul 1
2013
Aug 1
Sep 1
Oct 1
Nov 1
Dec 1
Jan 1,
2014
Feb 1
Mar 1,
2014
P
a
t
h

o
f

U
r
a
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u
s
P I S C E S
0
h
35
m
+5
0
h
40
m
0
h
45
m
0
h
50
m
0
h
30
m
+4
+3
Jul 1
2013
Aug 1
Sep 1
Oct 1
Nov 1
Dec 1
Jan 1,
2014
Feb 1,
2014
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A QUA R I US
10
22
h
20
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22
h
25
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22
h
30
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11
Star magnitudes
8 9 7 6 5
South of the Great Square of Pegasus (see the chart on page 44), star-
hop with binoculars or a nderscope to Uranus in Pisces and Neptune
in Aquarius. The closeup charts at left enlarge their paths for the next
few months. Uranus is about magnitude 5.7, so once you nd where on
its path it currently lies, the wide-scale chart above will be all you need.
Neptune, magnitude 7.9, will require the fainter stars of its closeup chart.
Not often are Uranus and Neptune imaged well enough from the ground to show any markings. Marc Delcroix and Franois Colas used the
42-inch reector at Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees to obtain these two infrared images on July 1st. An atmospheric-dispersion
corrector helped. Uranus is now banded, unlike the blank face it presented during Voyager 2s yby in 1986. Neptune shows signs of an o-
center white spot. Shown here at the same scale, the planets are currently 3.7 and 2.3 arcseconds wide. Tritons visibility has been boosted.
Uranus
Triton
Neptune and Triton
S
2
P

/

I
M
C
C
E

/

O
M
P

/

F
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C
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L
A
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/

M
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D
E
L
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O
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(
2
)
Alan MacRobert
trace of blue through my 6- and 12.5-inch
telescopes. The actual colors are weak
enough (unlike in garishly contrast-boosted
spacecraft images) that even planetary
scientists have some trouble distinguishing
a dierence between the two planets. More-
over, the colors may be slightly variable.
(See The Colors of Uranus and Neptune,
S&T: September 2010, page 56.)
Uranus and Neptune are called ice
giants not because theyre cold but be-
cause much of their bulk is thought to
consist of water (H
2
O), ammonia (NH
3
),
and methane (CH
4
), compounds that
planetary scientists call ices. Never mind
that deep inside the planets, these materi-
als are extremely hot.
Once regarded as oddities, Uranus and
Neptune are turning out to represent a
class of planets common around other
stars wherever exoplanets hunters look
and therefore, presumably, they are
abundant throughout the universe.
A Weak Penumbral
Lunar Eclipse
On the evening of Friday, October 18th,
careful skywatchers in the eastern half of
North America can watch the full Moon
undergo a slight penumbral eclipse.
The Moon will glide across the pale
outer fringe (penumbra) of Earths shadow,
never reaching the shadows dark umbra.
Mid-eclipse occurs at 23:50 UT on the 18th
(7:50 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time), when the
Moons south-southeastern limb will be a
quarter of a lunar diameter away from the
unseen edge of Earths umbra. Unusual shad-
ing on that side of the Moon should be fairly
plain to see. You may detect lesser traces
of penumbral shading for about 45 minutes
before and after that time.
The penumbral eclipse will also be visible
in the evening from the Caribbean and South
America. In Europe and Africa, it happens in
the middle of the night with the Moon high
in the sky. For observers in western, central,
and south Asia, it happens before or during
dawn on the 19th (local date).
See more at skypub.com/oct2013eclipse.
Oct. 1 11:30 II.Sh.I
13:42 I.Sh.I
14:06 II.Sh.E
14:07 II.Tr.I
14:58 I.Tr.I
15:55 I.Sh.E
16:46 II.Tr.E
17:11 I.Tr.E
Oct. 2 10:52 I.Ec.D
14:27 I.Oc.R
Oct. 3 2:34 III.Sh.I
5:29 III.Sh.E
6:15 II.Ec.D
7:44 III.Tr.I
8:10 I.Sh.I
9:26 I.Tr.I
10:23 I.Sh.E
10:48 III.Tr.E
11:27 II.Oc.R
11:40 I.Tr.E
16:20 IV.Ec.D
18:42 IV.Ec.R
Oct. 4 4:22 IV.Oc.D
5:21 I.Ec.D
7:30 IV.Oc.R
8:55 I.Oc.R
Oct. 5 0:48 II.Sh.I
2:38 I.Sh.I
3:24 II.Sh.E
3:25 II.Tr.I
3:55 I.Tr.I
4:51 I.Sh.E
6:05 II.Tr.E
6:08 I.Tr.E
23:49 I.Ec.D
Oct. 6 3:24 I.Oc.R
16:24 III.Ec.D
19:22 III.Ec.R
19:32 II.Ec.D
21:07 I.Sh.I
21:40 III.Oc.D
22:23 I.Tr.I
23:19 I.Sh.E
Oct. 7 0:37 I.Tr.E
0:45 II.Oc.R
0:48 III.Oc.R
18:18 I.Ec.D
21:53 I.Oc.R
15:35 I.Sh.I
16:43 II.Sh.E
16:45 II.Tr.I
16:52 I.Tr.I
17:48 I.Sh.E
19:05 I.Tr.E
19:24 II.Tr.E
Oct. 9 12:46 I.Ec.D
16:21 I.Oc.R
8:49 II.Ec.D
9:28 III.Sh.E
10:03 I.Sh.I
11:20 I.Tr.I
11:44 III.Tr.I
12:16 I.Sh.E
13:33 I.Tr.E
14:02 II.Oc.R
14:49 III.Tr.E
Oct. 11 7:15 I.Ec.D
10:50 I.Oc.R
Oct. 12 3:12 IV.Sh.I
3:24 II.Sh.I
4:32 I.Sh.I
5:37 IV.Sh.E
5:48 I.Tr.I
6:01 II.Sh.E
6:02 II.Tr.I
6:44 I.Sh.E
8:02 I.Tr.E
8:42 II.Tr.E
15:13 IV.Tr.I
18:23 IV.Tr.E
Oct. 13 1:43 I.Ec.D
5:18 I.Oc.R
20:23 III.Ec.D
22:05 II.Ec.D
23:00 I.Sh.I
23:22 III.Ec.R
Oct. 14 0:16 I.Tr.I
1:13 I.Sh.E
1:39 III.Oc.D
2:30 I.Tr.E
3:19 II.Oc.R
4:48 III.Oc.R
20:11 I.Ec.D
23:47 I.Oc.R
Oct. 15 16:43 II.Sh.I
17:28 I.Sh.I
18:45 I.Tr.I
19:19 II.Sh.E
19:21 II.Tr.I
19:41 I.Sh.E
20:58 I.Tr.E
22:00 II.Tr.E
Oct. 16 14:40 I.Ec.D
18:15 I.Oc.R
11:22 II.Ec.D
11:57 I.Sh.I
13:13 I.Tr.I
13:27 III.Sh.E
14:09 I.Sh.E
15:26 I.Tr.E
15:40 III.Tr.I
16:35 II.Oc.R
18:46 III.Tr.E
Oct. 18 9:08 I.Ec.D
12:43 I.Oc.R
6:25 I.Sh.I
7:41 I.Tr.I
8:37 II.Sh.E
8:37 II.Tr.I
8:38 I.Sh.E
9:54 I.Tr.E
11:17 II.Tr.E
Oct. 20 3:37 I.Ec.D
7:11 I.Oc.R
10:18 IV.Ec.D
12:53 IV.Ec.R
22:17 IV.Oc.D
Oct. 21 0:21 III.Ec.D
0:38 II.Ec.D
0:53 I.Sh.I
1:35 IV.Oc.R
2:09 I.Tr.I
3:06 I.Sh.E
3:21 III.Ec.R
4:22 I.Tr.E
5:34 III.Oc.D
5:50 II.Oc.R
8:43 III.Oc.R
22:05 I.Ec.D
Oct. 22 1:40 I.Oc.R
19:19 II.Sh.I
19:21 I.Sh.I
20:37 I.Tr.I
21:34 I.Sh.E
21:54 II.Tr.I
21:56 II.Sh.E
22:50 I.Tr.E
Oct. 23 0:35 II.Tr.E
16:34 I.Ec.D
20:08 I.Oc.R
Oct. 24 13:50 I.Sh.I
13:55 II.Ec.D
14:29 III.Sh.I
15:04 I.Tr.I
16:03 I.Sh.E
17:18 I.Tr.E
17:27 III.Sh.E
19:05 II.Oc.R
19:33 III.Tr.I
22:40 III.Tr.E
Oct. 25 11:02 I.Ec.D
14:36 I.Oc.R
Oct. 26 8:18 I.Sh.I
8:37 II.Sh.I
9:32 I.Tr.I
10:31 I.Sh.E
11:10 II.Tr.I
11:14 II.Sh.E
11:46 I.Tr.E
13:50 II.Tr.E
Oct. 27 5:31 I.Ec.D
9:03 I.Oc.R
Oct. 28 2:46 I.Sh.I
3:12 II.Ec.D
4:00 I.Tr.I
4:20 III.Ec.D
4:59 I.Sh.E
6:14 I.Tr.E
7:21 III.Ec.R
8:20 II.Oc.R
9:24 III.Oc.D
12:34 III.Oc.R
21:10 IV.Sh.I
23:48 IV.Sh.E
23:59 I.Ec.D
Oct. 29 3:31 I.Oc.R
8:40 IV.Tr.I
11:58 IV.Tr.E
21:14 I.Sh.I
21:55 II.Sh.I
22:28 I.Tr.I
23:28 I.Sh.E
Oct. 30 0:26 II.Tr.I
0:33 II.Sh.E
0:41 I.Tr.E
3:06 II.Tr.E
18:28 I.Ec.D
21:59 I.Oc.R
Oct. 31 15:43 I.Sh.I
16:28 II.Ec.D
16:55 I.Tr.I
17:56 I.Sh.E
18:27 III.Sh.I
19:09 I.Tr.E
21:26 III.Sh.E
21:34 II.Oc.R
23:21 III.Tr.I
Phenomena of Jupiters Moons, October 2013
Every day, interesting events happen between Jupiters satellites and the planets disk or shadow. The rst columns give the date and
mid-time of the event, in Universal Time (which is 4 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time). Next is the satellite involved: I for Io, II
Europa, III Ganymede, or IV Callisto. Next is the type of event: Oc for an occultation of the satellite behind Jupiters limb, Ec for an
eclipse by Jupiters shadow, Tr for a transit across the planets face, or Sh for the satellite casting its own shadow onto Jupiter. An occul-
tation or eclipse begins when the satellite disappears (D) and ends when it reappears (R). A transit or shadow passage begins at ingress
(I) and ends at egress (E). Each event is gradual, taking up to several minutes. Predictions courtesy IMCCE / Paris Observatory.
11:30
13:42
14:06
14:07
14:58
15:55
16:46
17:11
10:52
14:27
2:34
5:29
6:15
7:44
8:10
9:26
10:23
10:48
11:27
11:40
16:20
18:42
4:22
5:21
7:30
8:55
0:48
2:38
3:24
3:25
3:55
4:51
6:05
6:08
23:49
3:24
16:24
19:22
19:32
21:07
21:40
22:23
23:19
0:37
0:45
0:48
18:18
21:53
14:06
15:35
16:43
16:45
16:52
17:48
19:05
19:24
12:46
16:21
6:32
8:49
9:28
10:03
11:20
11:44
12:16
13:33
14:02
14:49
7:15
10:50
3:12
3:24
4:32
5:37
5:48
6:01
6:02
6:44
8:02
8:42
15:13
18:23
1:43
5:18
20:23
22:05
23:00
23:22
0:16
1:13
1:39
2:30
3:19
4:48
20:11
23:47
16:43
17:28
18:45
19:19
19:21
19:41
20:58
22:00
14:40
18:15
10:30
11:22
11:57
13:13
13:27
14:09
15:26
15:40
16:35
18:46
9:08
12:43
6:00
6:25
7:41
8:37
8:37
8:38
9:54
11:17
3:37
7:11
10:18
12:53
22:17
0:21
0:38
0:53
1:35
2:09
3:06
3:21
4:22
5:34
5:50
8:43
22:05
1:40
19:19
19:21
20:37
21:34
21:54
21:56
22:50
0:35
16:34
20:08
13:50
13:55
14:29
15:04
16:03
17:18
17:27
19:05
19:33
22:40
11:02
14:36
8:18
8:37
9:32
10:31
11:10
11:14
11:46
13:50
5:31
9:03
2:46
3:12
4:00
4:20
4:59
6:14
7:21
8:20
9:24
12:34
21:10
23:48
23:59
3:31
8:40
11:58
21:14
21:55
22:28
23:28
0:26
0:33
0:41
3:06
18:28
21:59
15:43
16:28
16:55
17:56
18:27
19:09
21:26
21:34
23:21
Image-stabilize your binoculars with scrap wood and an evenings work! See skypub.com/binoframe.
EAST WEST 3
5
7
9
11
13
15
17
19
21
23
25
27
29
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
31
Europa
Ganymede
Io
Callisto
Oct 1
Jupiters Moons
OBSERVING
Celestial Calendar
The wavy lines represent Jupiters four big satellites. The central
vertical band is Jupiter itself. Each gray or black horizontal band is
one day, from 0
h
(upper edge of band) to 24
h
UT (GMT). UT dates
are at left. Slide a papers edge down to your date and time, and
read across to see the satellites positions east or west of Jupiter.

Minima of Algol
1 21:31
4 18:20
7 15:08
10 11:57
13 8:46
16 5:34
19 2:23
21 23:12
24 20:00
27 16:49
30 13:38
3 10:27
6 7:15
9 4:04
12 0:53
14 21:42
17 18:30
20 15:19
23 12:08
26 8:57
29 5:46
Sept. UT Oct. UT
In October Jupiter rises very late in the
evening and shines highest and steadiest
around the beginning of dawn when
you may already be out with your scope
trying for Sirius B (see page 30).
Any telescope shows Jupiters four
big Galilean moons. Binoculars usually
reveal at least two or three, occasionally
all four. Identify them with the diagram
at left. All of the months interactions
between Jupiter and its satellites are
listed in the table on the previous page.
Multi-Shadow Transits
Many double shadow transits occur on
Jupiter in October, when two of the
moons cast their tiny black shadows onto
the planets face at once. In the table, look
for two shadow events beginning (Sh.I)
before one of them ends (Sh.E). The ones
with good viewing times for at least part
of North America come on the mornings
of October 17th (beginning at 11:57 UT),
19th (6:25 UT), and 26th (8:37 UT).
On the morning of October 12th you
can watch during a triple shadow transit
from the longitudes of Europe and eastern
North America; it runs from 4:32 to 5:37
UT (12:32 to 1:37 a.m. Eastern Daylight
Time, when Jupiter will still be moderately
low as seen from the Eastern time zone).
The satellites involved are Io, Europa, and
Callisto, with Callistos shadow crossing
the planets south polar region.
Great Red Spot
Jupiter itself enlarges from 38 to 41
across its equator in October. Here are
the times, in Universal Time, when the
Great Red Spot (actually pale orange-tan)
should cross Jupiters central meridian.
The dates, also in UT, are in bold:
September 1, 7:41, 17:36; 2, 3:32, 13:28,
23:24; 3, 9:19, 19:15; 4, 5:11, 15:07; 5, 1:02,
10:58, 20:54; 6, 6:50, 16:45; 7, 2:41, 12:37,
22:33; 8, 8:28, 18:24; 9, 4:20, 14:16; 10,
0:11, 10:07, 20:03; 11, 5:59, 15:54; 12, 1:50,
11:46, 21:41; 13, 7:37, 17:33; 14, 3:29, 13:24,
23:20; 15, 9:16, 19:12; 16, 5:07, 15:03; 17,
0:59, 10:55, 20:50; 18, 6:46, 16:42; 19, 2:37,
12:33, 22:29; 20, 8:25, 18:20; 21, 4:16, 14:12;
22, 0:07, 10:03, 19:59; 23, 5:55, 15:50; 24,
1:46, 11:42, 21:37; 25, 7:33, 17:29; 26, 3:25,
13:20, 23:16; 27, 9:12, 19:07; 28, 5:03, 14:59;
29, 0:55, 10:50, 20:46; 30, 6:42, 16:37.
October 1, 2:35, 12:30, 22:26; 2, 8:22,
18:18; 3, 4:13, 14:09; 4, 0:05, 10:00, 19:56;
5, 5:52, 15:47; 6, 1:43, 11:39, 21:34; 7, 7:30,
17:26; 8, 3:22, 13:17, 23:13; 9, 9:09, 19:04;
10, 5:00, 14:56; 11, 0:51, 10:47, 20:43; 12,
6:38, 16:34; 13, 2:30, 12:25, 22:21; 14, 8:17,
18:12; 15, 4:08, 14:04, 23:59; 16, 9:55,
19:51; 17, 5:46, 15:42; 18, 1:38, 11:33, 21:29;
19, 7:25, 17:20; 20, 3:16, 13:12, 23:07; 21,
9:03, 18:59; 22, 4:54, 14:50; 23, 0:46, 10:41,
20:37; 24, 6:33, 16:28; 25, 2:24, 12:20,
22:15; 26, 8:11, 18:07; 27, 4:02, 13:58, 23:54;
28, 9:49, 19:45; 29, 5:41, 15:36; 30, 1:32,
11:27, 21:23; 31, 7:19, 17:14.
To obtain Eastern Daylight Time
from UT, subtract 4 hours. The times
above assume that the spot is centered at
about System II longitude 202. The Red
Spot appears closer to the central merid-
ian than to the limb for 50 minutes
before and after these times. A light blue
or green lter will help by boosting the
contrast of Jupiters reddish, orange, and
tan markings a bit.
Action at Jupiter
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Sky & Telescope
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OBSERVING
Exploring the Moon
Photographic images provide geologists with critical
evidence about the structure of craters, lava ows, volca-
noes, and other lunar landforms. This evidence leads to
interpretations of the processes that formed and modied
the lunar surface. In the late 1940s, astronomer Ralph
Belknap Baldwin used photographs to measure the diam-
eters and depths of craters. He later used their depth-to-
diameter ratios as strong evidence that lunar craters were
formed during explosive impact events, rather than by
volcanic eruptions.
Today, scientists rely on much higher resolution
images from NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to
study impact melts and discover small fault scarps and
other details important to improving our understanding
of the Moon.
Drawing the Moon
Sketching lunar features trains you to see more.
Photographs are required for such work because they
are unbiased depictions of the Moons surface. Drawings
of lunar features, dating back to astronomers rst tele-
scopic explorations, cannot be relied on to accurately rep-
resent the shapes, sizes, positions, or even the existence
of features. And yet, sketching still has plenty to oer
amateur observers. Drawing at the eyepiece is perhaps
the best way to appreciate what you are looking at.
To take a telescopic image of the Moon today hardly
requires more than centering the area of interest on your
computer monitor, adjusting focus, and recording some
snapshots or videos. Executing a drawing forces you to
carefully study every detail of the area of interest. You
cant add a line to the sketch without repeatedly looking
in the eyepiece to see the shape and brightness of each
feature. Drawing also makes you question every detail
you see: Is that crater bigger or smaller than the sur-
rounding craters? Does it overlap adjacent landforms,
or do other features cross over it? Is its rim sharp and
crisp, or rounded with bites taken out? Drawing requires
real-time interrogation of every bit of the landscape seen
in the eyepiece, which will subconsciously inform your
future observations.
Even if youre not artistically inclined, drawing the
Moon is relatively easy. My rst two sketches (facing page)
demonstrate how drawing leads to rapid learning. My rst
attempt more than 50 years ago produced a simple outline
map showing major features over a broad area. I was
happy to locate and identify craters at the time, but other
than nding my way around the Moon, I didnt learn
much about lunar landforms.
My next sketch focused on just one feature, 34-km-
wide crater Davy. I succeeded in capturing the craters
irregular outline, its small central peaks, and the mounds
near its oor that cut into its wall. I also tried to depict
shadows, bright walls, and tonal variations. Even today
I am satised with this drawing, because it marked the
beginning of my careful study of crater morphology.
Many amateur astronomers sketch what they see in the
eyepiece not only because its challenging and fun, but
also because its a great learning experience. During the
last decades of the 20th century, British amateur Harold
Hill created many renditions of lunar features using a
technique known as stippling groups of dots whose
varied size and spacing create the illusion of volume and
Although photography has long since replaced sketching as the imaging
tool of most astronomers, drawings such as this excellent example of
craters Mercator and Campanus at sunrise are attractive and informative.
T
H
O
M
A
S

M
C
C
A
G
U
E
Contributing editor Charles A. Wood never consults a libration
chart, preferring to be surprised at what chance bestows on him. Charles A. Wood
The Moon October 2013
Librations
Paneth (crater) October 1
Demonax (crater) October 12
Petrov (crater) October 15
Abel (crater) October 18
Distances
Perigee October 10, 23
h
UT
229,792 miles diam. 32 19
Apogee October 25, 14
h
UT
251,379 miles diam. 29 32
NEW MOON
October 5, 0:35 UT
FIRST QUARTER
October 11, 23:02 UT
FULL MOON
LAST QUARTER
Phases
For key dates, yellow dots indicate
which part of the Moons limb is
tipped the most toward Earth by
libration under favorable illumination.
S&T: DENNIS DI CICCO
light. Phil Morgan is a modern stylistic disciple whose
drawings often lead to innovative interpretations of lunar
geology and topography. Other drawing techniques
are also employed by other artists. Thomas McCague
of Illinois and Erika Rix in Texas both use black paper
and Cont crayons to produce a painterly look to their
drawings. Theres even a website to share your lunar (and
Left: The authors rst lunar drawing captured the general positions of Plinius and its surroundings, but little else. Right: His second
attempt concentrated on crater Davy, capturing its unique shape and central peaks. South is up in both sketches.
many other astronomical objects) drawings, known as
the Astronomy Sketch of the Day (http://www.asod.info),
where you can explore other amateurs results.
Try some lunar sketching next time youre at the
telescope as a way to learn to look closely when observing,
and youll quickly nd yourself noticing more and more
subtle details.
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OBSERVING
Deep-Sky Wonders
The Age of Aquarius
Explore the delights of the celestial Water Carrier.
The age of Aquarius is said to begin when the March
equinox, the spot where the Sun crosses the celestial
equator from south to north, moves into Aquarius.
Although this may take place in a wide range of centuries
according to various precepts of astrology, astronomically
it wont occur until the year 2597. But we neednt wait that
long to enjoy peace under the stars, love of the night sky,
and an understanding of the universe. For stargazers,
the age of Aquarius is whenever that constellation is best
placed for us to explore.
Our rst stop in Aquarius is the beautiful globular
cluster Messier 2. Italian-French astronomer Giovanni
Domenico Maraldi discovered M2 while tracking Comet
de Chseaux of 1746. At rst Maraldi mistook this object
for the comet, but then he realized that it was another
nebulous star, like the one hed found four nights before
the globular cluster M15 in Pegasus. Maraldi described
his discovery as round, clearly bounded, and brighter in
the middle.
Since M2 is visible in most binoculars and nder-
scopes, its easy to locate by noting the triangle that it
makes with the stars Alpha () and Beta () Aquarii. In
my 950 nderscope, M2 is a small, glowing ball that
grows considerably brighter toward the center. Even when
I view the cluster from my home, where its buried in
the glow of nearby Schenectady, M2 shows a faint halo,
brighter core, and tiny bright nucleus through 1236
image-stabilized binoculars.
Through my 130-mm (5.1-inch) refractor at 23, a 10th-
magnitude star pinned to the northeastern fringe of M2s
halo serves as a handy measuring device. The star is 4.5
from the M2s center, as measured on a detailed sky atlas,
so the clusters apparent diameter is 9. At 63 the halo
is very granular, and the core grows intensely brighter
toward the center. Two prominent stars inhabit the
southeastern reaches of the halo, and a few lesser suns
dwell farther in. At 117 I see many very faint stars in
the halo and outer core. The outer core is about 5 long,
elongated southeast to northwest, while the bright inner
core is rounder. M2 is quite pretty in my 10-inch reector
at 213. Its ercely blazing heart is ecked with stars, and
the rest of the cluster is a starry blizzard 12 across.
M2 is a geriatric 12 billion years old, beams at us from
a distance of 38,000 light-years, and hosts 350,000 stars.
Lets move on to the double star Struve 2838 (2838
or STF 2838), stationed 2.5 west-southwest of Omicron
() Aquarii. The 6th-magnitude primary is easy to spot as
the brightest star in the area. It shines yellow-white in my
130-mm scope at 63, and a much dimmer companion
lies to its south.
Struve 2838 didnt appear in Thomas William Webbs
Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes until the books
fourth edition (1881). There Webb writes, Curious and
beautiful stream of small stars n p, where n p means
north preceding (northwest of) the double star. Webbs star
stream, W1 Aquarius, is only 15 from 2838, and they
easily share the eld of view through my 130-mm scope at
63. The asterism boasts seven stars from magnitude 9.8 to
12.9 cascading slightly east of south for 11.7. This glittering
7218
7252
7185
7180
7188
49
35
2838
W1
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C A P R I C OR NUS
Helix
Nebula
7184
M2
M30
7293
Path of Neptune
in 2013
A QUA R I US
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Sue French Sue French welcomes your comments at scfrench@nycap.rr.com.
Angular sizes and separations are from recent catalogs. Visually, an objects size is often smaller than the cata-
loged value and varies according to the aperture and magnication of the viewing instrument. Right ascension
and declination are for equinox 2000.0.
Object Type Mag. (v) Size/Sep. RA Dec.
M2 Globular cluster 6.5 16 21
h
33.5
m
00 49
2838 Double star 6.3, 9.5 16 21
h
54.6
m
03 18
W1 Aqr Asterism 8.7 11.7 2.2 21
h
53.8
m
03 09
Aqr Double star 4.3, 4.5 2.2 22
h
28.8
m
00 01
NGC 7180 Galaxy 12.6 1.6 0.7 22
h
02.3
m
20 33
NGC 7184 Galaxy 10.9 6.0 1.5 22
h
02.7
m
20 49
NGC 7185 Galaxy 12.6 2.3 1.5 22
h
02.9
m
20 28
NGC 7188 Galaxy 13.2 1.6 0.7 22
h
03.5
m
20 19
NGC 7252 Galaxy 12.1 2.2 1.8 22
h
20.7
m
24 41
tumble of suns courses through a 34, westward-pointing,
isosceles triangle of 6th- and 7th-magnitude stars. The tri-
angles southeastern corner is claimed by 2838, while the
very wide double Scardia 104 takes the western point.
The name W1 Aquarius springs from a booklet created
by Ohio amateur Daniel M. Hudak, who sketched 128
of Webbs starry elds from the 1962 edition of Celestial
Objects for Common Telescopes.
The Water Jar of Aquarius is an asterism marked by
the stars Gamma(), Eta (), and Pi () Aquarii, with Zeta
() Aquarii in the center. Zeta is a visual binary whose
nicely matched stars, currently 2.2 apart, make a charm-
ing duo in my 130-mm refractor at 117. Both gleam
yellow-white, with the slightly dimmer companion resting
south-southeast of its primary.
Now well dive down to the galaxy quartet of NGC
7180, NGC 7184, NGC 7185, and NGC 7188 in south-
ern Aquarius. NGC 7184 is the brightest of the bunch
and makes an equilateral triangle with the stars 35 and
41 Aquarii. Through my 105-mm refractor at 36, NGC
7184 is faint and very elongated east-northeast to west-
southwest. The view is much improved at 87, with the
galaxy nearly 4 long and a little shy of 50 wide. It holds
a brighter oval half as long, and the oval frames a bright,
round core half the galaxys width. A 13th-magnitude star
is anchored o the galaxys east-northeastern tip.
Placing NGC 7184 near the southern edge of the eld
brings two additional galaxies into view, both very faint.
NGC 7185 is a small, plump oval tipped north-northeast,
The string of stars that lies immediately northwest of the
bright double star in the lower left corner (Struve 2838) is
sometimes called W1 Aquarius.
The three northernmost galaxies in this group are physically
related, but NGC 7184 is signicantly more distant.
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7185
7188
7180
Galaxies, Stars, and One Great Star Cluster in Aquarius
7184
OBSERVING
Deep-Sky Wonders
while NGC 7180 is a slightly shorter and more slender oval
leaning east-northeast. These three galaxies also share the
32 eld of view through my 10-inch scope with a wide-eld
eyepiece that gives a magnication of 187. NGC 7184 is
lovely. It covers 5 1, shelters a starlike nucleus, and wears
an extremely faint star on its southern ank, east of the gal-
axys nucleus. The relatively large, bright core of NGC 7185
now sports a sizeable halo 1 long and two-thirds as wide.
NGC 7180 stands out well and appears 1 long and half as
wide. Shoving the scope a bit northeastward takes us to
the nal member of our quartet, NGC 7188. This galaxy is
roughly the same size and shape as NGC 7180, but it leans
northeast and has a tiny, bright nucleus.
The quartets three faintest galaxies are about 60
million light-years away from us and physically related.
Despite the fact that NGC 7184 appears larger and
brighter, its actually more distant at 100 million light-
years. NGC 7184 is a giant spiral galaxy, substantially
larger than our own Milky Way. The oval I saw within
NGC 7184 is actually a star-forming ring. Can you distin-
guish the rings true shape?
Lastly well visit NGC 7252. Its fun to observe an
object with an unusual name, and you have to love one
called the Atoms for Peace Galaxy! In 1953 President
Eisenhower gave his famous Atoms for Peace speech
promoting the peaceful use of nuclear power. The ensu-
ing conferences logo included a diagram of an atomic
nucleus surrounded by loops representing orbiting elec-
trons. Reminiscent of that diagram, NGC 7252 displays
strange loops of material around its core.
Atoms for Peace is simple to locate. It shares a low-
power eld with golden 49 Aquarii, which sits 38 to the
east. The galaxy is just a faint smudge that shows better
with averted vision through my 10-inch scope at 68. A 14-
tall, lopsided U of six 10th- to 12th-magnitude stars hangs
upside down above (north of) the galaxy. At 88 NGC 7252
is slightly oval, tipped north-northwest, and about 2 long.
It bears a relatively large, slightly brighter core. The galaxy
is more fetching at 115. Its core appears somewhat blocky,
and its adorned with a small, brighter nucleus.
The strange structure of Atoms for Peace is the result of
a nearly completed merger of two disk galaxies. Their cores
have already combined, but surrounding loops and tails
composed of stars, dust, and gas are evidence of the ongo-
ing fray. Some say that the fusion of these galaxies to form
something new and grand can be likened to nuclear fusion,
making the galaxys nickname even more appropriate.
Can anyone with a large telescope detect the galaxys
tails or the arrangement of loops in its halo?
This is also the age of Aquarius for the planet Nep-
tune, which is currently near Sigma () Aquarii. Its tiny
blue dot wont leave the constellation until 2023.
This close-up of the giant spiral galaxy NGC 7184 provides a clear view of the star-
forming ring surrounding the galaxys bright core.
The complex shape of NGC 7252, also known as the Atoms for Peace Galaxy,
results from the relatively recent merger of two disk galaxies.
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S & T Test Report Sean Walker
STTR summary text
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inter-
ests focus mainly on astrophotography, when it comes to
visual observing I most enjoy solar system objects and the
occasional double star. So it piqued my interest when the
venerable German rm Baader Planetarium introduced a
new observing package geared toward planetary observers.
The Classic Q-Turret Eyepiece Set includes a four-
position eyepiece turret, a set of four eyepieces, and a
2.25 convertible Barlow all packaged in an attractive
foam-tted metal container. The turret, eyepieces, and
Barlow are standard 1-inch format. Each item individu-
ally represents a great value, and together they make an
Although my astronomical
The Baader
Q-Turret Eyepiece Set
Baader Classic
Q-Turret Eyepiece Set
U.S. Price: $395
(items also available separately)
Available in the U.S. from Alpine
Astronomical www.alpineastro.com
This modern take on a classic
telescope accessory and eyepiece
design is a boon for planetary
observers and imagers.
excellent observing package.
The idea behind a turret to hold multiple eyepieces
dates back to 1863, when the German optics manufac-
turer Ernst Leitz introduced a turret system for micro-
scope objectives. By the late 19th century, commercial
eyepiece turrets were being made for telescopes. These
S&T PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEAN WALKER AND DENNIS DI CICCO
Described in detail in the accompanying text, the new Baader
Classic Q-Turret Eyepiece Set includes four eyepieces, a
versatile Barlow, and the eyepiece turret all packaged in an
attractive metal container. The items (including the con-
tainer) can be purchased separately.
accessories, however, have only been available sporadically
in the United States. Several companies advertised them
during the 1950s and 60s, but they never became very
popular. Perhaps that will change with the introduction of
the Baader model, especially since it is of far better qual-
ity than any of the ones Ive seen going back to the 60s.
The Q-Turret
The Q-Turret, which is available separately for $85, is
manufactured from high-density plastic that is light-
weight and durable. Its four eyepiece holders are attached
to a convex disk carefully designed to require a minimum
of additional focus travel. When tted to a telescopes
1-inch focuser, the Q-Turret moves eyepieces just 1
inches (38 mm) farther out from the focuser.
Although this distance is inconsequential for Schmidt-
and Maksutov-Cassegrain telescopes that focus by moving
their primary mirrors, it may present a problem for tele-
scopes with xed focal points. For example, the additional
1 inches of back focus was just slightly too much for my
12-inch Newtonian and its low-prole focuser. Fortu-
nately, it was easy for me to move my scopes primary
mirror forward in its tube by 1 inch and solve the prob-
lem, but this may not be possible with some commercial
telescopes. If you have a telescope with a xed focal point,
make sure you can rack your focuser in by at least 1
inches from the focal point in order to use the Q-Turret in
its basic conguration.
Another option for reaching focus with the Q-Turret is
to thread the 2.25 Barlow lens into the turrets nosepiece.
Doing this will extend the telescopes focal point out from
the focuser, but at the cost of increasing the magnica-
tion of all the eyepieces.
Once I moved my scopes primary mirror forward,
every eyepiece I tried came to focus. The Q-turret uses
a nice click-stop mechanism to reliably position each
eyepiece holder precisely over the turrets nosepiece when
you rotate the unit. This feature works very well. The
turret rotates smoothly and easily by hand, and the click
stops provide enough tension to prevent it from turning
even when you are using moderately heavy eyepieces or
planetary cameras.
I certainly enjoyed using the Q-Turret, and I found
it particularly nice when used with my Imaging Source
video camera. I would center a crater in the eld of the
10-mm Classic Ortho eyepiece and then rotate the camera
into position. Without fail, the crater would be accurately
centered in the cameras frame. This arrangement will
also be ideal for planetary imaging, since it can be notori-
ously di cult to center planets in the small elds of most
video cameras.
One drawback I encountered with the Q-Turret was an
artifact of our summer climate here in the northeastern
U.S. Our nights are generally very humid, and radiational
cooling can quickly drop the temperature of exposed optical
Top: The author tested the Classic Q-Turret Eye-
piece Set with his 12-inch Newtonian reector
after moving the primary mirror inch forward
in its tube to allow for the additional back focus
required for the Q-Turret. Bottom: The Q-Turret
is an ideal accessory for planetary imagers work-
ing with compact video cameras. After center-
ing the target in an eyepiece, you can rotate
the camera into position and have the target
centered in the frame. Note the impromptu lens
caps, which keeps dew from forming on the
eyepieces. They are described in the text.
WHAT WE LIKE:
Well made and durable
Precision click stops
Eyepieces have classic
Zeiss Jena optical
design
WHAT WE DONT LIKE:
Only available in
1-inch format
surfaces below the dew point, causing them to fog up. This
frequently happened to all four eyepieces simultaneously,
temporarily putting an end to my observing. That was before
I discovered an interesting trick. When the rubber eye guard
is slipped o each eyepiece, the top rim of the eyepiece is the
perfect diameter to snuggly hold the plastic dust caps sup-
plied for the eyepiece barrels. These impromptu lens caps,
which were very easy to pop on and o, kept the eyepieces
dew free when I wasnt looking through them.
The Baader Classic Eyepieces
The four Baader Classic eyepieces supplied with the set
can be purchased individually for $74 each. There are
three orthoscopic eyepieces (18-, 10-, and 6-mm) and
a 32-mm Plssl. They are claimed to be parfocal, but I
found that each required a slight adjustment of the tele-
scopes focus when swapping among them. When used
in the Q-Turret, however, it was easy enough to slide each
eyepiece back and forth slightly in its holder and lock it
into a precise parfocal position. This made switching the
eyepieces quick and easy.
With my 12-inch Newtonian, the eyepieces produced
magnications of 51, 90, 162, and 270. Adding the
Barlow lens to the turrets nosepiece upped the magni-
cations to 114, 203, 365, and 608, a range that almost
perfectly accommodates my viewing habits when the
seeing is very good.
As a set, all four eyepieces worked well. I noticed that
The Barlow lens provides the same 2.25 magnication
increase for eyepieces when it is threaded into its own
barrel or when threaded into the Q-Turrets nosepiece.
The Q-Turrets compact size makes it an easy-to-use accessory for
Cassegrain telescopes.
I needed to keep my eye carefully centered in the eld of
the 32-mm Plssl, since the view tended to black out if I
didnt. The kit includes a plastic extension piece that ts
between the top of the Plssls barrel and eye guard and
help users position their eyes properly. It did help reduce
the blackouts slightly.
Overall, the views through the Plssl were pleasant,
with good star images nearly to the edge of the eld, and
only a slight bit of color fringing was apparent when bright
S&T Test Report
objects such as the Moon were at the edge of the eld.
My best views were with the three orthoscopic eye-
pieces. Baader states that they are based on the legendary
Zeiss Jena orthoscopic design, with a few notable dier-
ences. First, as anyone familiar with the views through
traditional orthoscopic eyepieces knows, the design has a
narrow apparent eld of view (AFOV). Baader, however,
has used a larger eld stop than found in traditional
orthoscopics, and this has increased the AFOV to 50.
This was done to help observers nd their targets and
center them in the eld rather than to create a wider eld
of excellent images. But even a 50 eld may seem small
in an age when many modern eyepieces have 70, 80, and
larger elds.
Although I knew that Baader chose a wider eld at
the expense of what some may consider imperfect stellar
images at the edge of the eld, I found the drop in perfor-
mance to be inconsequential. Star images were slightly
degraded at the edge of the eld; they were more out-of-
focus than astigmatic, though it was hard to tell which
caused the most distortion. But the Classic Orthos arent
designed for observing extended star elds. Like tradi-
tional orthos, their sweet spot is at the center of the eld.
One of my test targets for the eyepieces was the
famous double star Gamma Virginis, better known as
Porrima. This pair of 3.5-magnitude suns is currently
widening from a minimum separation about a decade
ago, and they now appear almost 2 arcseconds apart. With
my 12-inch reector and the 2.25 Barlow screwed into
the turrets nosepiece, I easily saw Porrima as double with
all three Orthos. The components were most cleanly split
when I was viewing them with the 6 mm.
Observing Saturn through the Orthos, particularly the
10 mm, was stunning. The planets muted butterscotch col-
ors and bright ring system were on ne display near oppo-
sition when I was testing the Q-Turret set. I routinely spot-
ted ve of Saturns moons even when they were close to the
bright rings. Eye relief was tight with the 6-mm eyepiece,
but the recessed region around the eye lenss volcano top
let me to soak in the sharp image without smudging the
eld lens with errant swipes of my eyelashes.
I was particularly taken by the pure colors seen
through all four of the eyepieces. The view was much
whiter than that in several of my eyepieces made with
exotic-glass elements that impart a slight yellow cast to
the view. Light scatter and ghosting are also well con-
trolled in the Baader Classic Eyepiece Set; only occasion-
ally did I spot any reections in the eld when I moved
the gibbous Moon just outside the eld.
The 2.25 Barlow (sold separately for $69) is a versatile
accessory. It is designed to avoid duplication of magnica-
tions when used with the Classic Eyepiece Set, and works
very well with each eyepiece except for a slight vignetting
with the 32-mm Plssl. The Barlow provides the same
2.25 magnication increase when eyepieces are slipped
into the Barlow barrel assembly or when the Barlow lens
is threaded into the Q-Turret nosepiece. The lens also
provides a modest 1.3 magnication increase when it is
threaded directly into the barrel of any of the eyepieces in
the set.
I found the Barlow to be a perfect accessory for imag-
ing the Sun with my Coronado P.S.T. and the Imaging
Source DMK 21AU618.AS video camera. Threaded into
the cameras nosepiece, the lens extended the scopes
focal point enough for the camera to reach to focus with
only a slightly boost in image scale.
The Baader Classic Q-Turret Eyepiece Set, or any of
its individual components, can ll voids in any planetary
observers arsenal of tools.
After a slow summer for planetary observers, imaging editor
Sean Walker is awaiting Jupiters return to the evening sky.
Top: Two well-designed detents (arrowed) ensure precise align-
ment of the four eyepiece ports when each one is rotated into
place. The detents also provide enough holding force to keep the
Turret from rotating under the load of heavy eyepieces or cam-
eras. Bottom: Little details such as threaded brass inserts molded
into the turrets plastic body are an indication that the unit was
designed for years of use.
Gary Seronik
Telescope Workshop
that the only way to get
every last drop of optical performance from a reecting
telescope is to have the scope in good collimation. When
we want to tune up the collimation we usually reach for
devices such as a Cheshire eyepiece or laser collimator.
But in spite of their utility and usefulness, many of these
collimation tools have shortcomings. For example, most
collimation devices require that the center of the primary
mirror be accurately marked in some way. Thats ne for
Newtonians, but not for Schmidt-Cassegrains and Maksu-
tovs. Luckily, theres an easy way of achieving optical
alignment that doesnt require any of these tools.
The method outlined here is essentially a star test, but
with a twist. It can be performed in the dark and only
requires a clear night sky. Begin by centering a star thats
around 2nd magnitude in your scopes eld of view. For
Dobsonian users in the north, Polaris is the ideal choice
its the right brightness and essentially stationary. If
your scope has a tracking mount, you have more options.
Next, choose an eyepiece that provides the right
amount of magnication. The ideal power is around 25
Most readers know
No-Tools Collimation
Heres a simple method for aligning your telescopes
optics without lasers or other gadgets.
per inch of aperture, which is what Dick Suiter recom-
mends in his classic book, Star Testing Astronomical
Telescopes (Willmann-Bell, 2009). Thus, you should use
around 200 for an 8-inch scope. A simple, math-free way
As explained in the accompanying
text, the oset central hole in this
defocused star image indicates that
the reector is out of collimation.
Step 1: By re-aiming the scope,
move the defocused star image
around the eld until its image
appears the most concentric.
Step 2: By adjusting the scopes
main collimation screws, move the
defocused image to the center of
the eld.
Step 3: To further rene collimation,
adjust the scopes focus to produce
a smaller out-of-focus image and
repeat steps 1 and 2 .
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To enjoy the sharpest views of the Moon, planets, and stars, the
optics in your telescope must be accurately collimated.
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to get 25 per inch of aperture is to choose an eyepiece
with a focal length that matches the f/ratio of your scope.
For example, if your scope is f/6, use a 6-mm eyepiece. If
its f/10, a 10-mm eyepiece is right.
Begin by adjusting the focus in or out until the star
appears as a disk of light with a dark hole near its center
(the hole is the secondary mirrors silhouette). If your
scope is out of collimation, that hole will not appear
centered in the illuminated disk, and thus your primary
mirrors zone of optimum performance isnt centered in
the eyepiece eld. Your collimation task is to move that
zone to the center of the eld.
Begin this process by moving the out-of-focus star
around the eld of view by re-aiming the scope slightly.
Eventually youll nd the location where the dark hole
in the star image is centered, or most nearly so thats
the sweet spot. Then, by using your scopes collimation
screws only, move the defocused star from that position to
the center of the eyepiece eld.
If youre working with a Newtonian reector, it helps to
have someone else make collimation adjustments to the
primary mirror while you look in the eyepiece and give
instructions. If youre collimating a Schmidt-Cassegrain,
you can probably do the necessary adjustments to the sec-
ondary mirror yourself. Proceed slowly and methodically.
Once youve moved the defocused star to the center of
the eyepiece eld, adjust the scopes focus to shrink the
star image down into a smaller circle of light this ups
the collimation sensitivity. Repeat the previous steps, then
focus down tighter still, and repeat again. After one or
two iterations, you will be looking at a star image thats
just slightly out of focus, which is where this method is
most accurate. Finally, when you think youre done, center
the star, defocus it, then slowly refocus while paying close
attention to the dark hole at the center of the star image.
If your scope is well collimated, the bright rings in the
defocused star image will collapse down concentrically
around the shrinking black center.
This method works very well, but there are a couple
of provisos. First, if youre collimating a Newtonian, you
have to make sure your secondary mirror is already cor-
rectly positioned. (See the September 2012 issue, page
72, for details.) Second, collimation accuracy depends on
atmospheric seeing conditions, but then too so does your
scopes optimum performance. Finally, the star-test col-
limation method works best for a quick touch-up after the
scope has already been roughly aligned but most of the
time thats all the collimation thats needed. Give it a try.
Im condent that with a little practice, itll take you only
a few moments to ne-tune your scopes optical align-
ment in the eld.
Contributing editor Gary Seronik is an experienced telescope
maker and observer. He can be contacted through his website,
www.garyseronik.com.
March 27 - April 4, 2014
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High-Altitude Photography
For eclipse chasers, 2011 was not a very
good year. The Moons umbral shadow
had last crossed Earths surface in July
2010, and the next total solar eclipse wouldnt come until
November 2012. But it occurred to me [coauthor Beldea]
that having this much time would give me a chance to
prepare something special, something attempted only
once before by NASA in 1963: a stratospheric balloon
ight into the shadow of the next total eclipse.
The path of the November 2012 eclipse would begin in
northeastern Australia, where the Moons shadow entered
the atmosphere at colossal speed before slowing down little
by little as it swept across the Pacic Ocean toward its end
point near the coast of Chile. Roughly 100 miles (160 km)
wide, this eclipse track resembles a fault line in the atmo-
Stratosphere
Braving the Australian Outback, an international amateur team
launched a balloon to catch last Novembers solar eclipse.
Ctlin Beldea
& Joe Cali
sphere where the shadows sudden appearance causes a
rapid change in local conditions, sending an atmospheric
tsunami thousands of miles north and south of the
track. This phenomenon has not been widely studied,
which added to the attractiveness of a balloon ight.
In addition to lofting scientic instruments into the
umbral shadow, a balloon ight presented the opportu-
nity to make a video of the eclipse in high denition from
the stratosphere, 20 to 25 miles up.
In collaboration with the Romanian science magazine
Stiinta & Tehnica, my team launched a balloon named
Stratospherium 1 on October 15, 2011. It reached an
altitude of 22 miles, setting a new altitude record for an
amateur balloon launch in Eastern Europe and bring-
ing back to Earth the rst Romanian-made images from
Chasing
Totality
from
the
To see an edited version of the eclipse
video made from the balloon, go to
www.skypub.com/balloon.
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the upper stratosphere. Its success ignited my dream that
we could do serious research with a limited budget from
the stratosphere during the next total eclipse.
To that end we launched Stratospherium 2 in August
2012. The ight did not lift above 20 miles, hammering
home the need for us to be cautious with our preparations
and especially with our launch procedures. It did, how-
ever, help us train a team for what we knew would be a
di cult launch into the lunar umbra three months later.
Reaching for the Stratosphere
How do you send a balloon to the edge of the strato-
sphere? A helium balloon lifts by displacing heavier air
that would normally occupy the same volume as the bal-
loon, similar to the way a boat oats by displacing water.
The mass dierence between the volume of helium in
the balloon and the air it displaces allows us to calculate
the buoyancy. Air is only 5.6 times heavier than helium
(unlike water, which is 833 times heavier than air), so a
balloon needs a lot of helium to lift a relatively small pay-
Just as totality ended, an HD video camera aboard the balloon captured
the Moons shadow racing eastward across the Cape York Peninsula
below. Unless otherwise credited, all photographs are by Ctlin Beldea
with special processing of the ights video images by coauthor Joe Cali.
load. Hydrogen has about half the density of helium and
can therefore lift more for a given volume, but we decided
against using it for safety reasons.
A balloon lled with 35.3 cubic feet of helium can hold
a 2.2-pound payload neutrally buoyant (no rise or fall). In
order to lift a payload, the mass of the air displaced by the
helium must be greater than the payload. This dier-
ence is called free weight, and the amount of free weight
determines the balloons ascent velocity. This velocity was
especially important to us because we wanted our payload
to reach the stratosphere just as the eclipse shadow swept
by. And with a mere two minutes of totality, the timing of
this encounter was critical.
For the eclipse ight our scientic package had to be
downsized from those used at our launches in Romania.
We made a berglass-reinforced polystyrene capsule mea-
suring 11-by-9-by-6 inches, half the size of the previous
ights. But we doubled the number of cameras, putting
one on every side of the capsule to shoot critical footage
toward and away from the Sun during totality. Two of
these cameras were HD camcorders and the other two
were still cameras. Other equipment included a tracking
radio, GPS module, and a science pack with temperature,
pressure, and UV- and IR-radiation sensors. The science
instruments were powered by a 4 amp-hour Li-Po battery
that weighed about 9 ounces (about 0.25 kg).
One of the most important aspects of the eclipse
ight was to obtain the necessary permits to y a bal-
loon in Australian airspace. Because a careless balloon
launch a few months earlier had shut down a large track
of airspace, the Australian authorities put us through the
wringer. But after long and di cult negotiations, co-
author Cali obtained the permits.
In order for us to see the trajectory of the balloon
in real time, we had to rely on the experience of Adrian
Florescu, the amateur-radio expert on our team. Unfor-
tunately, Adrians visa application wasnt granted until it
was too late to travel to Australia, so he had to coordinate
everything from Bucharest. But we were able to team up
with an amazing pair of enthusiastic ham-radio special-
ists, Howard Small and Sam Scafe from Queensland.
Along with our aerospace engineer, Florin Mingireanu,
they tracked our balloon and transmitted its exact coordi-
nates to Australian air tra c controllers every 15 minutes
after the launch. Howard and Sam were also charged with
recovering our instrument package after the ight ended
and the package parachuted back to Earth.
Lastly, there was our choice of a launch site. In addi-
tion to the width and location of the eclipse track, we had
to consider the trajectory of the balloon based on wind
forecasts, which arent accurate until 6 to 12 hours before
the launch. Clouds were also an issue since our permits
only allowed for a balloon launch in clear skies.
During the 2011 Romanian balloon ight, a camera captured this
stratospheric view of the Danube River and its delta region where
it empties into the Black Sea.
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Romanian members of the eclipse team Florin Mingireanu (left), coauthor Ctlin Beldea (center), and Marc Ulieriu (behind Beldea)
prepare for the 2011 balloon launch described in the text. The successful ight achieved many milestones for the team.
Heading for the Launch
At 7 a.m. on November 13th, just 24 hours before totality,
our team left Cairns in a convoy of three cars for the wil-
derness of the Cape York Peninsula. We crossed the Great
Dividing Range and passed through some of oldest rain
forest on Earth. After the small town of Mount Carbine,
the landscape changed dramatically to dry, open eucalyp-
tus forest and savannah grasslands. Soon the GSM cell
phone signal faded away and the only hint of civilization
was the asphalt road beneath us. If not for the road, wed
have sworn that wed traveled back to prehistoric times.
At noon, we stopped to refuel in a small village called
Lakeland. The Sun was blazing hot, but it cast no shad-
ows our latitude put the Sun right at the zenith. As we
continued on from Lakeland, the paved road soon ended
and we entered no mans land. We stopped to check
our maps and test our satellite telephone, watched by two
emus and dozens of snakes. We also made one last attempt
to get a wind update to forecast the balloons trajectory.
After that, we moved farther into the Outback near the
village of Kimba, arriving at King Valley around 6 p.m.
We decided to spend the night there and launch Eclipser 1
from that location in the morning. Our station was at east
longitude 143 44.3 and south latitude 15 34.9.
We assembled our science capsule and parachute
before midnight. After a nal two-hour technical discus-
sion on ight parameters, we agreed to ll the balloon
with no more than 215 cubic feet of helium, providing an
ascent velocity of 19 feet per second. Our launch had to be
at precisely 5:25 a.m. to ensure that the balloon wouldnt
reach its bursting altitude before the 6:37 a.m. totality.
Near Disaster
At 3:30 a.m. we began our launch preparations. All went
smoothly until the helium ow unexpectedly stopped.
After a few agonizing minutes we realized our helium
cylinder was empty. Instead of containing 250 cubic feet
of gas, the cylinder had only 145, leaving us well short of
our planned 215 cubic feet!
With only 20 minutes until the time of launch, we had
a major problem. We spent 5 minutes recalculating lift
parameters and came to some painful conclusions. In order
to achieve the lift velocity of 19 feet per second, we had to
remove almost half of the capsule instruments, including
several cameras and the precious scientic sensors.
With the stripping down of the capsule completed, we
had an otherwise perfect launch at 5:27 a.m. After two
minutes of ight we had conrmation that the balloon
was ascending at a velocity of 18 feet per second! It was
almost perfect. As planned, we transmitted Eclipser 1s
position to air tra c authorities every 15 minutes, and the
balloons position was also uploaded in real time to the
ham radio ARPS website for digital communication. (You
can see a map of the balloons trajectory archived on that
website at www.skypub.com/balloontrack.)
Above: A star-studded
sky in the hours before
the launch bode well for
the team because their
ight permit was only
valid for clear conditions.
Left: With the science
capsule readied, the team
began lling the balloon
unaware that there
wasnt enough helium for
the planned ight.
Below: Facing away from
the Sun during totality,
the HD video camera
recorded the Moons
umbral shadow darken-
ing the sky overhead
and the ground below.
Perspective enhances
the shadows tapered
appearance.
With the balloon climbing toward the stratosphere,
we set about documenting the eclipse from the ground.
We had an hour to prepare our gear and nd a good spot
to watch the partial phases. Our launch spot wasnt the
ideal observing location. We had chosen the only clearing
we found for miles around, and it had trees blocking the
horizon in all directions. Fortunately, there was one spot
where the eclipsed Sun would appear just 1 above the
forest canopy.
At 6:36:44 a.m., the balloon entered the umbral cone
above us. On the ground, however, we had to wait another
25 seconds before totality engulfed us. As the Moon
moved in front of the Sun, we experienced a beautiful
2-second-long diamond ring followed by the sudden
appearance of the solar corona. Unlike my previous four
eclipses, this corona was radially symmetrical and shaped
very much like the 1999 corona visible during the total
eclipse that crossed Europe. This shape is commonly
observed near the time of maximum solar activity, and it
is very dierent from the bowtie-shaped coronas seen dur-
ing minimum activity. Although it might have been an
illusion, the corona and its ne radial laments seemed
sharper to the eye than what I recalled from the previous
few eclipses, which had broader coronal streamers.
Immediately after totality, our attention turned back to
the balloon. Where was it? Was it ying in the right direc-
tion? At what altitude did it intercept the eclipse? How-
ard looked at the tracking coordinates and realized the
balloon was right above us. I looked up, and when my eye
found innity focus, there it was! About 60 miles south-
east of our location, coauthor Cali was viewing the eclipse
near the community of Maitland Downs. He looked for
the balloon after totality but could not nd it.
Above: Coauthor Beldea used a William Optics 88-mm f/5.6 Megrez
refractor and Nikon D800 camera for his ground-based pictures
snapped (top to bottom) at the beginning, middle, and end of totality.
Right: Beldeas composite image of brief exposures, made at the begin-
ning and end of totality, shows the Suns pink chromosphere on the
east (right) and west limbs at the eclipses contact points.
Once we had sight of our balloon perched in the strato-
sphere, we followed it with our naked eyes and binoculars
as it rose from 18 to 23 miles altitude. With binoculars,
we could distinguish the entire assembly, especially the
balloon, which had expanded to its maximum diameter of
32 feet due to the low air pressure at that altitude. Florin,
who has participated in dozens of stratospheric balloon
ights launched from U.S., said that its rare for a ground
crew to see a balloon at the top of its ight.
After 108 minutes of ascent, the balloon burst 23 miles
above Cape York Peninsula. It took another 45 minutes
for the capsule to parachute back to Earth, where it landed
some 12 miles east of our position, 60 feet up in a tree
anked by dozens of huge termite nests.
The balloon had documented the eclipse from inside
the umbral cone at an altitude of 79,000 to 82,500 feet.
The onboard cameras captured the elliptical shape of the
umbra as it rushed across the ground from the Gulf of
Carpentaria toward us and as it continued onward, disap-
pearing into the vastness of the Pacic Ocean.
Just as with any ight mission into space (or near the
edge of space), this was a di cult task. And ours was
made more challenging because we couldnt postpone
Right: After a 45-minute parachute descent from the balloons
maximum altitude of 23 miles, the instrument capsule landed 60
feet up in a tree a mere 12 miles east of its launch site.
The balloons launch site was surrounded by trees that nearly
interfered with the teams ability to watch and record totality
from the ground.
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the launch when technical problems arose the eclipse
wasnt going to wait for us. We missed an opportunity to
measure key atmospheric parameters, but we succeeded
in documenting the event with full HD video. Perhaps
our story will inspire future eclipse chasers to launch
stratospheric ights into the umbral shadow.
Romanian science journalist Ctlin Beldea is an avid eclipse
chaser. See his work at www.astrofoto.ro. Australian Joe Cali
has visited more than a dozen countries in 20 years of pursu-
ing the Moons shadow. His work is at www.joe-cali.com.
The Man Who
H. A. Rey, co-creator of Curious George,
turned his talents skyward to demystify the stars.
Ann Mulloy Ashmore
Hans Rey sat in his Greenwich Village studio in the
autumn of 1947, trying to come up with an idea for his
familys annual New Years card. Together with his wife,
Margret, Rey had created the popular Curious George
childrens book series in the early 1940s. But the illustra-
tor had always held an interest in the night sky, and he
toyed with the idea of a zodiac theme for his holiday card.
When he consulted an encyclopedia to aid in the design,
he found images that recalled a long-held frustration.
The constellations were connected with meaningless
lines, he said. I thought there must be a better way.
Reys experience with traditional astronomical guides
began in 1916, when the German army drafted him at age
18 to ght in World War I. [I was sent] to Russia, Bel-
gium, and France as an involuntary and unwelcome tour-
ist, he recalled. So he passed away the long, dark nights
on the front gazing at the heavens with a small astronomy
book as his guide.
Those long nights, and the New Years card that
recalled them, ultimately led to The Stars: A New Way to
See Them, a refashioned beginners guide to the night sky
published in 1952. A second book published two years
later, Find the Constellations, presented a simplied ver-
sion of the guide for children. Rey explains why he felt
compelled to redesign the skys patterns in The Stars:
There are of course plenty of books about [astronomy], and they
do very well in most respects. But in one important point they
seem to fail us: the way they represent the constellations . . .
Some books show, arbitrarily drawn around the stars, elaborate
allegorical gures which we cannot trace in the sky. Others, most
of the modern ones, show the constellations as involved geomet-
rical shapes, which dont look like anything and have no relation
to the names. Both ways are of little help if we want to nd the
constellations in the sky yet this is precisely what we are after.
Rey didnt know much about celestial cartography or
mechanics when he rst decided to write books about the
night sky, but he spent the next four years researching the
subjects intensively. In 1951 Rey began to redraw the con-
stellations on his own terms, 35 years after his frustrated
attempts to nd the constellations above the battleelds
of Europe. He spoke of his method in a New Hampshire
Times prole: I started experimenting, connecting the
stars the way children do to make a drawing. I made the
constellations clearer. I took exactly the same stars and
connected them dierently.
Rey drafted The Stars at his Greenwich Village studio,
using the roof of the six-story building as an observatory
to check my diagrams with the real stars in the sky. (He
recommends rooftop observing to all his urban readers
too.) To see his diagrams in the dark, Rey painted the
glass on his ashlight red, probably borrowing ngernail
polish from his wife. But Margret didnt join him on the
rooftop. As Rey put it, You might say we have our books,
her books, and my books, the latter being astronomy a
sideline of mine. Margret is allergic to stars.
[Rey] was a man of unusual gifts and interests, said
Anita Silvey, one of the editors at his publisher, Houghton
Mi in. He spoke six languages uently, and had a work-
A NEW WAY
OF SEEING
H. A. Reys long-
standing interest
in astronomy led
to a refashioned
guide to the night
sky. He conveyed
complex celestial
mechanics in a
conversational
style, but hes
best remembered
for restyling the
constellations.
Curious Constellations
IMAGE FROM THE STARS, BY H.A.
REY. COURTESY OF HOUGHTON
MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Illustrated
THE STUDIO During the 1940s, H. A. Rey worked in this
studio in a six-story building in New York Citys Greenwich
Village. The buildings rooftop became Reys makeshift
observatory for checking his diagrams against the stars.
the Heavens
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ing knowledge of at least a half-dozen more. He knew
animals so intimately and befriended them so easily that
people were constantly bringing him creatures both wild
and tame that needed attention and loving care.
Only a small part of his extensive knowledge of science
went into The Stars. Though Rey wrote his book for ama-
teur astronomers like himself, he also wanted to make it
accessible to those without his background knowledge.
Afterwards, he noted how di cult it was to make com-
plex concepts plain using everyday language. Just as it
takes a thief to catch a thief, Rey joked, so it often takes
a layman to write for the layman on a scientic subject.
In my case, he added, the combination of the gift for
graphic presentation combined felicitously with a keen
interest in the scientic subject, and with an interest in
methods of teaching and learning.
Inspiring Youth
Reys simple presentation and artistic talent introduced
many beginners to the sky through The Stars, and the
same skills served him well in teaching. By 1953 Reys
research led him to teach a free course on constellations
at the American Museum of Natural History for the Ama-
teur Astronomers Association of New York.
Club member Bernie Golub wrote about Reys popular
class in an article for the December 1954 issue of Skylines,
the associations newsletter:
Mr. Rey, an AAAer and no stranger to most of us, delighted his
audience of some 250 AAAers and guests with his delineations
of the constellations. The matchstick congurations created by
Mr. Rey sweep away many cob-webby and foggy notions of the
constellations and bring a breath of fresh thought to the study
ONE YEAR AFTER THE STARS was published in 1952, one of
Reys friends, sculptor Robert Berks, visited Albert Einstein to design
a bronze portrait bust. The project would forge a lasting connection
between Rey and the famous scientist.
Einstein and Rey shared strikingly similar backgrounds and person-
alities, though they lived in dierent worlds. Both men were German
Jews who had sought refuge from Hitlers war machine. Both revered
nature, loved animals, and attributed their success to a childlike play-
fulness and curiosity that neither ever abandoned. And both men
each in his own way sought to describe the heavens.
When Berks traveled to Princeton, New Jersey, to visit Einsteins
home, he spent a full day getting to know the scientist before he
began designing the bust. As they talked in the study, Berks men-
tioned his astronomically inclined friend. Recounting Reys dissatisfac-
tion with the constellations depicted in most astronomy books, Berks
told Einstein about Reys new patterns, designed to actually represent
the animal or person in the constellations name.
One Curiosity, Two
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IMAGE FROM THE STARS, BY H.A. REY. COURTESY OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
INSPIRING YOUTH Facing page, far left: H. A. Rey reads one
of his books to a group of children in 1968.
THE TEACHER Facing page, near left: Rey entrusted 14-year-
old Harvey Singer to set up his Unitron refractor, the Cadillac of
small telescopes (pictured here), in Central Park for observing
sessions after class.
OLD VS. NEW Right: Reys diagrams simplied and demystied
modern constellation lines, which he said, show the constel-
lations as involved geometrical shapes, which dont look like
anything and have no relation to the names.
Reys book appealed to Einstein, perhaps in part because
he recognized his own nonconformity in the artists work. As
biographer Walter Isaacson wrote, several of Einsteins contem-
poraries came close to some of his breakthroughs . . . but [he]
alone among them was rebellious enough to throw out conven-
tional thinking that had dened science for centuries.
Rey sent Einstein a copy when Berks told him of the scien-
tists interest. Addressing the Sehr verehrter Herr Professor
(very honored professor), he wrote, This book has no scientic
claims, only the presentation method is dierent.
Einstein replied, Many thanks for your lucid and stimulating
book. I hope it will nd the interest it deserves words now
printed on the back of every copy of The Stars before signing
his note, Freundlich grsst Sie (with friendly greetings).
As Berks campaigned to build a memorial to Einstein on the
grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington,
D.C., he ensured the two men would share a lasting connec-
tion. Unveiled in 1979, two years after Reys death, the memo-
rial serves as a meeting point of two visions of the heavens.
A giant bronze Einstein hunches over in thought, scribbling
equations on the pad of paper in his lap as he did the day Berks
studied him in 1953. But here his feet rest on a eld of stars,
planets, and galaxies 2,700 objects in all, set as metal studs
in the emerald pearl granite.
The spray of celestial objects might bewilder visitors if not
for the nearby plaque Berks designed, where familiar gures
outline the stars beneath Einsteins feet. Just as in Reys illustra-
tion at left, Orion looms above the Hare, his club lifted over-
head. The Bull rushes towards the hunter, the Pleiades dangling
at the end of one of his long horns. Sirius, the brightest star in
the sky, adorns the collar of the Big Dog, who runs at Orions
side. And high above the fray, Reys Twins march hand in hand
across the sky.
A. M. Ashmore
of the sky. Nothing but a clearer understanding of the heavens
can possibly evolve from his happy and concise ideas.
Another amateur and one of the associations young-
est members, Harvey Singer, attended the constellation
classes as a 14-year-old boy. Mr. Reys presentations were
always interesting, Singer recalled (S&T: September 1999,
page 10) before he corrected himself. No, not interest-
ing they were exciting. He knew the secret of mak-
ing ordinary things interesting and interesting things
extraordinary.
Rey brought his Unitron refractor to class every week
for an informal observing session in Central Park after
class. And every week, Rey asked young Singer, Would
you mind setting up the telescope so that it will be ready
for us when we arrive?
Would I mind? Singer thought. I would have done
it for him anywhere and at any time . . . He trusted me
completely. Of course, I treated his telescope as if it were
my own no, better than if it were my own. And I felt
incredibly important. And proud.
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE STARS: A NEW WAY TO SEE THEM, BY H. A. REY. COPYRIGHT 1952, 1962, 1967, 1970, 1975, 1976 BY
H. A. REY. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT PUBLISHING COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Visions of the Heavens
But it was his mentors humanity and compassion
that Singer appreciated the most. After the viewing,
everyone who wanted to would accompany Mr. Rey to a
local cafeteria for coee and more conversation. Since
my budget was limited, I just took the subway home
instead. But one evening Mr. Rey asked me to accom-
pany the group to the cafeteria. He wanted to buy me
an ice-cream soda . . . I am certain it was the best ice-
cream soda I have ever had, bar none.
Wanting to return the favor, the teenager collected
all the spare change I could. The next week at the
cafeteria, Singer oered to pay for Reys coee. Thank
you, Rey responded, but, no. Someday, when you are
older, you can buy me a beer. He knew exactly how to
say no without hurting a teenagers feelings.
In 1963 the Reys moved to Cambridge, Massachu-
setts, just over a mile from the o ces of Sky & Tele-
scope. Rey continued teaching at the Cambridge Center
for Adult Education, his passion for sharing the night
sky unabated.
And Rey continued working on a third book
about the stars, to be titled Road Atlas of the Sky. But
diminished eyesight and a failing heart prevented its
completion. After Reys death in 1977 at the age of 78, a
letter from a neighbor in Waterville Valley to Margret
described what all who knew him and his love of the
stars felt about him:
Hans was such a ne, happy man . . . We will always re-
member the nights that he came down to our cottage to get
the boys to come out and see whats happening in the sky!
Andy and I have decided with great certainty that Hans and
[Curious] George are right up there in their own twinkling
constellation Hans smiling and watching, and George
probably acting out the pictures for a new book, George and
Hans Go to Heaven!
Ann Mulloy Ashmore, associate professor at Delta State
University, was a collection specialist at the de Grummond
Childrens Literature Collection, which houses the H. A.
and Margret Rey Literary Estate.
PERUSE THE EVENING SKY CHART at the center of Sky &
Telescope and youll see echoes of H. A. Reys stick gures every-
where. I led the design of S&Ts o cial constellations all 757
line segments! that appear in every issue since January 1993.
But though I grew up dearly devoted to Reys patterns, I realized
early on that we would need to make some changes.
First, his charmingly realistic gures rely heavily on stars that
are just too faint for modern, light-polluted skies. Night skies
have worsened signicantly over the past 60 years. And maybe
even back then Rey was pushing a little too hard to nd a good
cartoon in every constellation.
In pursuit of that goal, he also drew some lines where the eye
has a hard time seeing them. In the real sky, your eye infers a line
between any two bright stars that are near each other, whether
you like it or not. Your eye wont favor lines pointing instead to
much fainter stars, even to make a good Sea-Goat or Ram.
Third, Rey ignored the ancient, millennially accepted constella-
tion gures which remain on classical maps, in legendry, and
in Arabicized star names everywhere: the Head of the Kneeler
(Rasalgethi), the Tail of the Sea Monster (Deneb Kaitos).
So I adjusted the beloved but occasionally frustrating stick
gures accordingly compromising between realistic cartoons,
clear visibility, and adherence to ancient traditions.
Along the way I came up with a few remarkably suggestive
constellation patterns that match the ancients arrangements
spot-on. Virgo, for instance, is not supposed to be carrying Spica
on her rump but in one hand, while she sows springtime seeds.
Lupus, a pointy-nosed Wolf, is supposed to be recoiling back-
ward as Centaurus spears him in the throat.
So far, this new set seems to be standing the test of time.
Alan MacRobert
1
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Baten
Kaitos
Deneb
Kaitos
Menkar
Mira
CETUS
ERI DANUS
FORNAX
PI SCES
SCULPTOR
2 3 4 5
S&Ts Constellations
SEA MONSTER H. A. Reys patterns inuenced S&Ts o cial
constellations, but many were adjusted for clarity and to preserve
traditions. For example, Alan MacRobert changed the shape of
Cetus to preserve Deneb Kaitos as the sea monsters tail.
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Sean Walker
Gallery
Gallery showcases the nest astronomical images submitted to us by our readers. Send your very best shots to
gallery@SkyandTelescope.com. We pay $50 for each published photo. See SkyandTelescope.com/aboutsky/guidelines.
EXPANSIVE SUNSPOTS
Christian Viladrich
Surrounded by the solar surfaces complex granulation, sunspot groups AR 1785 (right)
and 1788 display thin laments within their penumbrae in this high-resolution image.
Details: Celestron C14 Schmidt-Cassegrain with Baader Astrosolar Safety Film and
IDS UI-3370CP video camera. Stack of 150 frames captured on July 6th at 11:02 UT.
Gallery
GALACTIC CASCADE
Terry Hancock and Fred Herrmann
Known as the Draco Trio, galaxies NGC 5985,
5982, and 5981 (from left to right) appear
distinctly dierent in a compact eld.
Details: Astro-Tech 12-inch f/8 Ritchey-Chrtien
astrograph with SBIG STT-8300 and QHY9
CCD cameras. Total exposure was 8 hours
through color lters.
CHINESE NIGHT
Je Dai
The center of the Milky Way shines over
the countryside near the village of Bamei in
Chinas Sichuan Province.
Details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR camera
with 14- to 24-mm zoom lens. Total exposure
was 2 minutes at ISO 2500.
Visit SkyandTelescope.com
/gallery for more of our
readers astrophotos.
V
//
r
REFLECTIONS IN CYGNUS
Harel Boren
NGC 6914s bluish reection
nebula adds a distinct color
contrast to clouds of hydrogen gas
that permeate Cygnus.
Details: Boren-Simon f/2.8 Power-
newt Astrograph with SBIG ST-
8300M CCD camera. Total exposure
was 3 hours through Astrodon
color and narrowband lters.
ALASKAN TIARA
Kurt Hillig
Shimmering
curtains of a green
aurora punctuated
by purple columns of
light crown the coast
of Alaska.
Details: Canon EOS
5D Mark II DSLR
camera with 16-mm
lens at f/2.8. Mosaic
of four 10-second
exposures captured at
ISO 5000.
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CALIFORNIA
Oceanside Photo & Telescope (Pages 53)
Optcorp.com
800-483-6287
CALIFORNIA
Woodland Hills (Page 13)
Telescopes.net
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BINOCULARS
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Meade.com
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CAMERAS
Apogee (Page 7)
CCD.com
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Frequency of Great Comets
With the impending apparition of
Comet ISON, its natural to ask how
often bright comets appear.
Going Deep in M31
Use this detailed guide to observe
dozens of individual features within
the Andromeda Galaxy.
Amateur Space Exploration
With CubeSats,
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Amazing ALMA
A giant array of antennas in northern
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Focal Point Henry G. Stratmann
Cat-astrophic Observing Session
A feline friend interferes with the authors astronomy plans.
neighborhood patrol. Go away, kitty! was
spectacularly ineective. Striding toward
her in an unconvincingly threatening
fashion while making shooing motions
with my hands made her retreat momen-
tarily only to return and sni my shoes
as I resumed my endeavors.
Her persistence nally convinced
me that any attempts at observing and
imaging that night would be futile. As
I returned my equipment to the garage,
she followed me there, too. Out of the
garage, kitty! fell on deaf ears. I resorted
to awkwardly chasing her around the
garage until she exited. But when I
nished bringing in my gear and
didnt see her anymore, I feared
shed silently padded back and
hid inside the garage.
She had. After running her
out again, I walked toward my car
to return it to the garage and
paused. Despite her crimes against
astronomy, I didnt want this disap-
pointing night to end with the cats curios-
ity proving fatal if she darted beneath my
moving wheels.
I raced inside my house and returned
with a bowl of milk. Setting it a safe dis-
tance away on the driveway, I watched her
every second as she imbibed that liquid
treat, and I made sure she remained far
away while I cautiously drove my vehicle
back into the garage. As I lowered the
garage door, the cat nished her repast
and sauntered away casting me a last
look that reminded me of images I have
seen of the Cats Eye Nebula.
With constellations named Canis
Major, Canis Minor, and Canes Venatici,
dogs are well represented in the heavens.
Now I know why no constellations honor
Felis catus, the domesticated cat.
Henry G. Stratmann, M.D., is a cardiolo-
gist and president of the Ozarks Amateur
Astronomers Club in Springeld, Missouri.
He is a regular contributor of stories and
articles to Analog Science Fiction and Fact,
many of them dealing with medicine, space
travel, and astronomy.
Many observing sessions end pre-
maturely when inquisitive clouds gather
above my telescope. I recently discovered
another, unexpected hazard for the ama-
teur astronomer.
One clear night I drove my car out of
the garage and moved a new astropho-
tography system into my driveway. After
running a long yellow extension cord
from an outlet in the garage to power my
equipment, I set up a table for my laptop
and ran cables from it to my telescope
and CCD cameras. While polar aligning
my mount, I was startled by something
brushing against the back of my ankles.
It was a neighbors petite gray cat out
for a nocturnal stroll. Her eyes glowed
in the dark like a golden double star as
she scrutinized me and my astronomical
paraphernalia.
I continued my work, expecting the
furry interloper to lose interest and
leave. But whether due to her species
natural nosiness or simply nding
me a convenient rubbing post as she
intermittently stroked her body against
my pant legs, she didnt.
Then I realized the danger she
presented. I pictured myself stepping
backward in the darkness and falling
over my feline friend something
that would do neither of us any good.
My extension cord still extended through
the open garage door. If I ignored her, she
might wander into a secluded corner of
my cluttered garage and be inadvertently
trapped inside when I nished my activi-
ties and lowered its door.
Though appreciating her interest
in stargazing, I decided it would be
best if she left and resumed her
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Eta Carinae. ProLine PL16803 & CFW-5-7. Telescope Design: Philipp Keller. Image: Chart32 Team. Image Processing: Wolfgang Promper.

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